Abstract

Anderson localization (AL) is one of the most fascinating effects in solid state physics [1] describing an increased probability of a wave function in a randomly affected potential to be localized in the vicinity of its initial position. This effect was primarily predicted for electron waves in condensed matter. However, since the effect generally bases on wave phenomena, AL also occurs in various systems and has been discovered for waves differing from electron wave fields in several 1D or 2D systems. For instance, AL was already observed in quantum gases, tightly scattering granular media, or photonic band gap materials [2–4]. Due to the bosonic character of light, cross-interactions can be neglected in photonic systems, which is an enormous advantage in terms of clearness to demonstrate AL. Moreover, corresponding investigations are already achievable in compact photonic system setups.

© 2013 IEEE