Anderson localization of light in a colloidal suspension (TiO2@silica)

Abstract

In recent years, there has been dramatic progress in the photonics field in disordered media, ranging from applications in solar collectors, photocatalyzers, random lasing, and other novel photonic functions, to investigations into fundamental topics, such as light confinement and other phenomena involving photon interactions. This paper reports several pieces of experimental evidence of localization transition in a strongly disordered scattering medium composed of a colloidal suspension of core–shell nanoparticles (TiO₂@silica) in ethanol solution. We demonstrate the crossover from a diffusive transport to a localization transition regime as the nanoparticle concentration is increased, and that an enhanced absorption effect arises at localization transition.