Geometric Pumping of Optical Work in Coherent Wave Scattering

Abstract

Optical work exchanged between light and time-varying matter underlies a wide range of emerging photonic technologies, yet a general geometric theory describing its generation and control has been lacking. Here we establish such a theory for coherent electromagnetic scattering. We show that the net optical work accumulated during an adiabatic modulation cycle is a geometric quantity determined by the Berry curvature of the outgoing field in parameter space. Nonzero optical work can thus be generated by cyclically modulating two or more independent system parameters. In contrast to conventional adiabatic pumping between incoherent reservoirs, optical work pumping vanishes under maximally mixed illumination. Greater illumination coherence increases the maximum work attainable through wavefront shaping. For fully coherent illumination, we derive the optimal incident wavefront and modulation trajectory that maximize the optical work per cycle. Our framework unifies time-varying photonics, optomechanics, and geometric transport within a common scattering formalism.