From Photonic Crystals to Photonic Glasses through disorder

Abstract

In the early 1800s, the double-slit experiments performed by Young and Fresnel provided strong evidence for wave-like nature of light [1]. This happened more than a century before L. de Broglie established that all matter, in particular the electron, has also a wave-like behavior [2]. Despite the time delay between both statements, solid state physics has motivated important goals in the field of light transport though complex dielectric media. These materials are dielectric structures in which the dielectric function varies on length scales comparable to the wavelength of light. The analogy is carried out by substituting matter waves for classical waves and electrostatic potential for dielectric function. Two paradigmatic examples suggested by this analogy between photons and electrons are photonic crystals [3, 4] and Anderson localization of light [5, 6, 7].