Absence of Anderson localization of light in a random ensemble of point scatterers.

As discovered by Philip Anderson in 1958, strong disorder can block propagation of waves and lead to the localization of wavelike excitations in space. Anderson localization of light is particularly exciting in view of its possible applications for random lasing or quantum information processing. We show that, surprisingly, Anderson localization of light cannot be achieved in a random three-dimensional ensemble of point scattering centers that is the simplest and widespread model to study the multiple scattering of waves. Localization is recovered if the vector character of light is neglected. This shows that, at least for point scatterers, the polarization of light plays an important role in the Anderson localization problem.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  Physical Review Letters

• Publication date

  2013-03-19

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.023905arXiv 1303.4655PMID 24484017
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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