Coherent absorption reveals colors hidden in a grey Fabry-P\'erot cavity

Abstract

Thin dielectric films are known to show distinct colors, responsible for the iridescence of various natural and artificial objects such as insect wings and soap bubbles. In the present article we show that a specialized thin film Fabry-P\'erot resonator, that we name conductor-dielectric-conductor (CDC) matched cavity, appears instead completely grey when observed under ordinary conditions (i.e. by analyzing the transmitted or reflected incoherent white light). Nonetheless, the matched CDC cavity still retains spectral information, that clearly appear when the cavity is analyzed by the coherent absorption technique. The CDC system is simply a dielectric thin film sandwiched by two conducting interfaces, whose conductivity shall be appropriately matched depending upon the dielectric refractive index. In practical applications, the ideal conducting interfaces can be safely replaced by thin metal films, making the system easily applicable in particular for cryptographic purposes. We indeed demonstrated experimentally that a visually recognizable thin-film color pattern can be concealed to an ordinary observer, and finally recovered through a dedicated coherent absorption decoding apparatus.