Light Transport and Localization in Two-Dimensional Correlated Disorder

Abstract

Structural correlations in disordered media are known to affect significantly the propagation of waves. In this Letter, we theoretically investigate the transport and localization of light in 2D photonic structures with short-range correlated disorder. The problem is tackled semianalytically using the Baus-Colot model for the structure factor of correlated media and a modified independent scattering approximation. We find that short-range correlations make it possible to easily tune the transport mean free path by more than a factor of 2 and the related localization length over several orders of magnitude. This trend is confirmed by numerical finite-difference time-domain calculations. This study therefore shows that disorder engineering can offer fine control over light transport and localization in planar geometries, which may open new opportunities in both fundamental and applied photonics research.