Light localization simulations in complex materials – LILAS

Designing new devices to treat or transmit information ever faster or with a larger flow rate has become an important scientific challenge nowadays. Similarly, controlling light-matter interaction to optimize optical properties of some materials is crucial in the context of energy conversion or imaging. To achieve these goals, a new class of nanostructured materials is emerging. Fully disordered or correlated, these materials have very surprising and widely not understood optical properties such as the existence of complete photonic band gaps or the observation of widely altered scattering properties. A fundamental study of them is required to appreciate their potential especially to confine light and to enhance light-matter interaction. The purpose of the LILAS project is to study theoretically and numerically several mechanisms to achieve light localization in complex materials and to investigate important fundamental questions of mesoscopic physics. In particular, we will study the existence or the nonexistence of the Anderson localization regime for light (still under strong debate at least for 3D systems or 2D vector waves) and analyze new and innovative photonic materials with short-range or long-range correlated disorder such as the recently discovered ``hyperuniform'' materials. These questions will be addressed in the light of extensive numerical simulations combined with simple theoretical models.