Photon mobility edges, band-tail localized states, and critical transport in three-dimensional disordered dielectric superlattices

In his 1987 Physical Review Letters paper introducing strong Anderson localization of photons in disordered dielectric superlattices, Sajeev John predicted that a three-dimensional periodic dielectric modulation with moderate disorder produces a pseudogap of localized photon states bounded by two photon mobility edges, but left the quantitative content of this prediction undetermined: the disorder-induced band-edge shift $E_C'$, the mobility-edge locations as functions of disorder strength and the correlation properties of the random dielectric fluctuation $V(x)$, the statistics and densities of nonperturbative band-tail localized states, and the critical amplitudes and transport exponents near the mobility edges. The intervening decades have resolved some of these components (full numerical vector band structure replaced the perturbative higher-order-determinant program; three-dimensional photonic band-gap materials and amorphous photonic structures were fabricated; a two-mobility-edge Anderson gap was measured for ultrasound; and full-vector simulations of amorphous hyperuniform dielectric networks show a diffusion-to-localization crossover near the band edge), while the photon-specific core remains open: no quantitative theory or experiment fixes the photon mobility edges versus disorder in band-gap-engineered dielectrics, and no unambiguous observation of the three-dimensional photon localization transition exists, with the role of the vector nature of light still actively contested.

Background

Anderson localization is the interference-driven halt of wave diffusion in a static disordered medium, originally described by P. W. Anderson for electrons in 1958: multiple scattering of a wave from the same disorder configuration returns amplitudes in phase, so that transport coefficients renormalize to zero and eigenstates become spatially localized. The scaling theory of localization (Abrahams, Anderson, Licciardello, and Ramakrishnan, 1979) predicts that in three dimensions diffusion survives for weak disorder but breaks down beyond a critical disorder strength; the frequency (or energy) separating extended from localized states is called a mobility edge. For photons, a heuristic onset criterion is the Ioffe–Regel condition $2\pi l/\lambda\simeq 1$, where $l$ is the elastic scattering mean free path and $\lambda$ the wavelength; a difficulty is that optical experiments can mimic localization through absorption, fluorescence, or finite-size effects. Photons in static, nondissipative dielectrics are attractive precisely because, unlike electrons, they do not interact with one another or with phonons, so they offer a clean test of the scaling theory.

A photonic band gap is a frequency interval in which a periodic dielectric structure (a photonic crystal, or in John's terminology a dielectric superlattice) forbids electromagnetic propagation, produced by Bragg scattering: a wave vector $\mathbf{k}$ lying on a Bragg plane, defined by a reciprocal-lattice vector $\mathbf{G}$, is resonantly coupled to the degenerate state $\mathbf{k}-\mathbf{G}$. The two 1987 founding papers of this field were Yablonovitch's proposal to inhibit spontaneous emission with three-dimensionally periodic dielectrics and John's paper. Unlike scalar electrons, the photon has two helicity (polarization) channels, and Bragg scattering can flip helicity; this extra degeneracy makes gaps harder to open in three dimensions and imposes stronger requirements on the dielectric contrast. Subsequent exact numerical band-structure calculations for periodic structures (Ho, Chan, and Soukoulis, 1990, on the diamond-structure lattice) established robust complete three-dimensional gaps.

John's 1987 analysis considered a dielectric constant $\epsilon(\mathbf{x})=\epsilon_0+\epsilon_1(\mathbf{x})+V(\mathbf{x})$, where $\epsilon_1$ is a periodic modulation (the superlattice) and $V$ is a weak random component with zero mean. For sufficient contrast (of order $\epsilon_a/\epsilon_b\gtrsim 2.13$ for a two-component fcc superlattice, near the $W$ point of the Brillouin zone), a pseudogap opens in the photon density of states (DOS): a frequency window in which propagating states are squeezed into symmetry-related valleys in wave-vector space. Near the band edge at a valley point $\mathbf{k}_0$, the lowest photon branch has anisotropic quadratic dispersion $\omega^2/c^2=E_C+A_1q_1^2+A_2q_2^2$, where $\mathbf{q}=\mathbf{k}-\mathbf{k}_0$ is the small deviation of the wave vector from the valley point, resolved along the principal axes of the valley. John also observed that near a band edge the wavelength entering the Ioffe–Regel condition must be reinterpreted as the inverse of the wave-vector deviation from the Bragg plane; since this quantity diverges at the band edge, the localization criterion can be met even for weak randomness. Adding disorder $V$ then (i) shifts the band edge perturbatively to a frequency $\omega^2/c^2=E_C'>E_C$, (ii) produces a photon mobility edge that typically lies between $E_C$ and $E_C'$ for weak randomness, and (iii) may generate nonperturbative, strongly localized band-tail states in the pseudogap, analogous to gap solitons in nonlinear optics or to the electronic band tails of doped semiconductors. John further showed that near a mobility edge $\omega_*$ photon transport follows scaling theory: the size-dependent diffusion coefficient is $D(L)=\frac{\bar c l}{3}\left(\frac{l}{L}+\frac{l}{\xi_{\mathrm{coh}}}\right)$, where $\bar c$ is an effective velocity, $L$ the sample size, and the coherence length diverges as $\xi_{\mathrm{coh}}\propto|\omega-\omega_*|^{-1}$ on the extended side, giving a time of flight across a slab $\tau(L)\sim L^2/D(L)$ instead of the diffusive $\tau\sim L^2/D$. The paper stated these results qualitatively and left their quantitative determination open; it also stressed that preparing three-dimensional disordered superlattice microstructures with controlled, characterized moderate disorder that couples the narrow wave-vector valleys near the band edge, and the consequences of the vector nature of light for the minimum required dielectric fluctuation, were the central experimental and theoretical challenges.

Problem Statement

For a three-dimensional dielectric superlattice — a periodic dielectric modulation of sufficient contrast (for the fcc example treated by John, of order $\epsilon_a/\epsilon_b\gtrsim 2.13$, with $\epsilon_a$ and $\epsilon_b$ the dielectric constants of the two components) carrying a weak random component $V(x)$ with zero mean — determine, quantitatively, the Anderson localization spectrum of photons in the pseudogap regime and its observable transport consequences. Here the strength of the disorder means the rms amplitude $\sigma=\langle V^2\rangle^{1/2}$ (normalized to the background dielectric constant $\epsilon_0$), and the correlation properties of $V(x)$ mean the pair correlation function $\langle V(\mathbf{x})V(\mathbf{x}')\rangle$; the requested dependencies are to be reported as functions of these. Concretely, in the framework where the clean band edge at a valley point is $E_C=2k_0^2/(\epsilon_0+\epsilon_1)$ with anisotropic quadratic dispersion $\omega^2/c^2=E_C+A_1q_1^2+A_2q_2^2$:

1. Compute the disorder-induced band-edge shift $E_C'>E_C$ and the positions of the two photon mobility edges (the lower and upper edges bounding the intermediate-frequency window of localized states) as functions of the strength of the disorder and of the correlation properties of $V(x)$, i.e., the mobility-edge trajectory or phase diagram separating extended from localized photon states in the band-gap-engineered medium, and determine the statistics, spatial profiles, and densities of the nonperturbative localized band-tail states in the pseudogap.

2. Determine the critical behavior of photon transport near the mobility edges. John's heuristic scaling predicted the size-dependent diffusion coefficient $D(L)=\frac{\bar c l}{3}\left(\frac{l}{L}+\frac{l}{\xi_{\mathrm{coh}}}\right)$, a time-of-flight scaling $\tau(L)\sim L^2/D(L)$, and a coherence-length divergence $\xi_{\mathrm{coh}}\propto|\omega-\omega_*|^{-\nu}$ on the extended side with the heuristic value $\nu=1$; determine the true exponent $\nu$ and the critical amplitudes, together with the finite-size scaling behavior in realistic superlattice geometries.

3. Establish the effect of the vector nature of light (two helicity channels, helicity-flip Bragg scattering with amplitude $f=(1-\cos\theta)/2$ for scattering from wave vector $\mathbf{k}$ to the degenerate state $\mathbf{k}-\mathbf{G}$ by an angle $\theta$) on the minimum dielectric fluctuation amplitude required for localization and on the robustness of the pseudogap and its mobility edges across lattice symmetries and disorder realizations.

The experimental realization of such microstructures is a separate, adjacent program beyond the scope of the question.

References

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