Electronic control of optical Anderson localization modes

Abstract

Anderson localization of light has been demonstrated in a few different dielectric materials and lithographically fabricated structures. However, such localization is difficult to control, and requires strong magnetic fields or nonlinear optical effects, and electronic control has not been demonstrated. Here, we show control of optical Anderson localization using charge carriers injected into more than 100 submicrometre-scale p-n diodes. The diodes are embedded into the cross-section of the optical waveguide and are fabricated with a technology compatible with the current electronics industry. Large variations in the output signal, exceeding a factor of 100, were measured with 1 V and a control current of 1 mA. The transverse footprint of our device is only 0.125 µm(2), about five orders of magnitude smaller than optical two-dimensional lattices. Whereas all-electronic localization has a narrow usable bandwidth, electronically controlled optical localization can access more than a gigahertz of bandwidth and creates new possibilities for controlling localization at radiofrequencies, which can benefit applications such as random lasers, optical limiters, imagers, quantum optics and measurement devices.

Strong Spatial and Spectral Localization of Surface Plasmons in Individual Randomly Disordered Gold Nanosponges

“…This model has been used successfully, e.g., to characterize mode localization in randomly disordered zinc oxide nanoneedles 47 and quasi-two-dimensional waveguides. 45,46 We find that the data in Fig. 4b are reasonably well described by the Nieuwenhuizen model with a single scaling parameter, g = 0.4.…”

Direct observation of Anderson localization in plasmonic terahertz devices

“…The Anderson localization of waves is an exotic phenomenon in which a propagating wave is spatially localized purely by structural disorder, thereby inhibiting its transport across the system 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 . Although the generality of this wave phenomenon has been proven by its demonstration in acoustic waves 5 , matter waves 6 and electromagnetic waves over different frequency ranges 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , it has remained elusive in the terahertz domain.…”

Sub-thermal to super-thermal light statistics from a disordered lattice via deterministic control of excitation symmetry

“…This requires illuminating the lattice with uniform intensity and phase differences of ±π/2 between neighboring lattice sites [28]. Our strategy can be extended to other on-chip implementations, such as coupled-resonator chains in which applied random voltages can modulate the couplings between resonators [29] to realize a versatile platform for dynamical control of light statistics in a compact device.…”