TY - JOUR
T1 - Externally driven broadband transmission in strongly disordered materials
AU - Bachelard, Nicolas
AU - Ropp, Chad
AU - Yang, Sui
AU - Zhang, Xiang
N1 - Funding Information:
The work is supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) (Award No. OSR-2016-CRG5-2950-03). The contribution from Nicolas Bachelard was supported by the European Union through the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 840745 (ONTOP).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Author(s).
PY - 2021/6/7
Y1 - 2021/6/7
N2 - In classical and quantum systems, order is of fundamental importance to many branches of science. Still, disorder is prevalent in our natural world. It manifests in various ways, and overcoming its limitations would open up exciting applications. In this work, we numerically show that disorder-induced Anderson localization can be mitigated and transmission systematically restored in random media through a self-organization process relying on energy dissipation. Under the scattering pressure produced by a driving optical field, a colloidal suspension composed of strongly polydisperse (i.e., random size) particles spontaneously assembles a Bloch-like mode with a broad transmission band. This mode displays a deterministic transmission scaling law that overcomes the statistical exponential decay expected in random media. This work demonstrates that, through the continuous dissipation of energy, amorphous materials can collectively synchronize with a coherent drive field and assemble a crystalline order. Self-organization, thus, offers a robust approach for addressing the physical limitations of disorder and immediately opens the door to applications in slow-light engineering and the development of “bottom-up” photonic materials.
AB - In classical and quantum systems, order is of fundamental importance to many branches of science. Still, disorder is prevalent in our natural world. It manifests in various ways, and overcoming its limitations would open up exciting applications. In this work, we numerically show that disorder-induced Anderson localization can be mitigated and transmission systematically restored in random media through a self-organization process relying on energy dissipation. Under the scattering pressure produced by a driving optical field, a colloidal suspension composed of strongly polydisperse (i.e., random size) particles spontaneously assembles a Bloch-like mode with a broad transmission band. This mode displays a deterministic transmission scaling law that overcomes the statistical exponential decay expected in random media. This work demonstrates that, through the continuous dissipation of energy, amorphous materials can collectively synchronize with a coherent drive field and assemble a crystalline order. Self-organization, thus, offers a robust approach for addressing the physical limitations of disorder and immediately opens the door to applications in slow-light engineering and the development of “bottom-up” photonic materials.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107781248&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85107781248&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1063/5.0055926
DO - 10.1063/5.0055926
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107781248
SN - 0003-6951
VL - 118
JO - Applied Physics Letters
JF - Applied Physics Letters
IS - 23
M1 - 231103
ER -