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Updated: Sep 3, 2026

Controlled Synthesis and Fluorescence Tracking of Highly Uniform Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) Microgels
Published on: September 8, 2016
Experimentally controlling scattering of water waves in correlated disorder
Angélique Campaniello1, Rémi Carminati1,2, Marcel Filoche1
1Institut Langevin, Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de la ville de Paris, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, CNRS, Paris 75005, France.
Abstract:
Wave propagation in complex media is a universal problem spanning optics, acoustics, mechanics, and condensed matter physics. While disorder usually causes strong scattering, recent theory predicts that a special class of correlated disorder, known as stealthy hyperuniformity, can suppress scattering at long wavelengths, making a material transparent despite remaining structurally disordered and far from a simple homogenization regime. Experimental evidence of this remarkable transport regime within a medium has, however, remained limited. Here we report a direct, spatially resolved experimental observation of a transition between scattering and nonscattering wave transport induced by hyperuniform correlations. Using water waves as a model platform, we image both the amplitude and phase of the wavefield as it propagates through a two-dimensional disordered structure. This enables us to extract quantitative transport observables, including extinction lengths, statistical fluctuations, and energy-flow patterns, and to directly identify the boundary of the hyperuniform transparency regime. Our results provide a quantitative experimental validation of the transport regimes predicted for stealthy hyperuniform disorder and demonstrate that correlated disorder offers a powerful and practical route to control wave propagation in realistic systems across wave physics.
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