Brownian spin-locking effect.

Brownian systems are characterized by spatiotemporal disorder, which arises from the erratic motion of particles driven by thermal fluctuations. When light interacts with such systems, it typically produces unpolarized and uncorrelated fields. Here we report the observation of a large-scale spin-locking effect of light within a Brownian medium. In an observation direction perpendicular to the incident wave's momentum, scattering naturally divides into two diffusion regions, each associated with an opposite spin from the Brownian nanoparticles. This effect arises from the intrinsic spin-orbit interactions of scattering from individual nanoparticles, which ubiquitously generate radiative spin fields that propagate through the Brownian medium with multiple incoherent scattering. It offers an experimental platform for exploring macroscale spin behaviour of diffused light, with potential applications in precision metrology for measuring various nanoparticle properties. Our findings may inspire the study of analogous phenomena for different waves from unusual spin-orbit interactions in complex disordered systems.