Wave propagation in weakly disordered media can produce structured transport phenomena that reveal fundamental aspects of wave physics, in which waves spontaneously focus into narrow channels that persist over long distances. While this phenomenon was first discovered in electronic transport, its manifestation in optical systems has remained largely unexplored. In this talk, I will describe experimental studies of wave propagation in ultrathin and curved optical systems carried out during my doctoral work at the Technion. Using a soap-film waveguide platform, we observed the first optical realization of branched flow, where weak disorder causes waves to spontaneously concentrate into long-lived narrow channels. These results highlight the role of coherence, disorder, and interference in shaping wave transport in high-dimensional photonic systems. Building on this foundation, my current research at LightSolver focuses on scalable analog optical computing based on networks of coupled lasers. I will discuss algorithmic and calibration frameworks developed for these systems and the challenges of controlling noise, phase stability, and scalability in photonic hardware.

Dr. Anatoly (Tolik) Patsyk is a physicist specializing in wave physics and photonic computing. He received his Ph.D. from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he experimentally discovered the phenomenon of optical branched flow in ultrathin optical media, published in Nature. His research explores wave dynamics in complex optical systems, including light propagation in curved geometries and disordered media. He is currently a research scientist at LightSolver, where he develops algorithms and leads the development of calibration and implementation methods for laser-based analog computing systems.