Trapped Waves Settle Debate on Localizing Light.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Phys.org
Researchers have used numerical simulations to definitively show that Anderson localization of electromagnetic waves in three dimensions is possible in random packings of metallic spheres, despite the loss of common metals such as aluminum, silver, and copper. This discovery could have applications in enhancing optical nonlinearities, light-matter interactions, and controlling random lasing, among other possibilities. The team's simulations were made possible by a recent breakthrough in accelerating numerical solutions by orders of magnitude with FDTD Software Tidy3D.