Andrew Forbes: Seeing through distortions with structured light

Light can be tailored in its many degrees of freedom for so-called structured light. This opens many exciting avenues in seeing smaller in imaging, enhanced precision in manufacturing, and in optical communication and information processing, where the many forms of structured light can be used as an information alphabet. Unfortunately, light gets distorted when passing through noisy channels, negating the benefits of its initial structure. Here I will outline how to find degrees of freedom and forms of structured light that are invariant to noisy channels, and show near distortion-free transport of classical and quantum forms of structured light, even in highly distorted media. Andrew has at various times in his career found himself as teacher, janitor, secretary, receptionist, web-master, systems engineer, sales rep, manager, director, and sometimes a scientist. Andrew is presently a Distinguished Professor within the School of Physics at the U. Witwatersrand (South Africa) where in 2015 he established a new laboratory for Structured Light. Andrew is active in promoting photonics in Africa, a founding member of the Photonics Initiative of South Africa and initiator of South Africa’s Quantum Roadmap. He is a Fellow of SPIE, the OSA (now Optica), the SAIP, and an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He holds an A-rating by the South African NRF, 3 honorary professorships, is editor-in-chief of the UK’s Journal of Optics and sits on the editorial board of three other international journals. Andrew has won several awards, including the NSTF national award for his contributions to photonics in South Africa, the Georg Forster prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for outstanding contributions to photonics, and the SAIP Gold Medal, the highest award for physics in South Africa, making him the youngest winner to date. Most recently he was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Award, the highest award for research from the university. Andrew spends his time having fun with the taxpayers’ money, exploring structured light in lasers as well as classical and quantum optics. DOI: 10.1117/1.AP.5.1.016006