Abstract

Spatially random light fields have the hallmark appearance of irregular speckle grains, and can be generated through interference of scattered light. They have been widely used in optical imaging and sensing applications, as well as providing disordered optical potentials for localization of cold atoms, colloidal particles and active media. Recent studies have shown that optical speckles can be customized to possess non-Rayleigh statistics and different topologies in a single plane [1,2]. Upon axial propagation, those customized statistics and topology erode away. Whether it is possible to create axially-varying speckles with tailored statistics has remained an open question. The major obstacle comes from the fact that the field patterns at different axial planes are related.

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