In strongly disordered systems, where Anderson localization is present, the mean transmittance (<T>) decays exponentially on average with increasing sample size. However, <T> often shows large fluctuations originating from extremely rare occurrences of necklaces of resonantly coupled states, possessing almost unity transmission. We show in this study that in one-dimensional (1D) random photonic systems with resonant layers these fluctuations appear to be very regular and have a period defined by the localization length ξ of the system. We demonstrate that necklace states are the origin of these well-defined oscillations. We predict that in such a random system efficient transmission channels form regularly each time the increasing sample length fits so-called optimal-order necklaces and demonstrate the phenomenon through numerical experiments. Our results provide new insight into the physics of Anderson localization in random systems with resonant units.

Date Published: 6 May 2008
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 6989, Photonic Crystal Materials and Devices VIII, 69890A (6 May 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.779968

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6989:
Photonic Crystal Materials and Devices VIII
Richard M. De La Rue; Ceferino López; Michele Midrio; Pierre Viktorovitch, Editor(s)