Hanbury Brown and Twiss Correlations of Anderson Localized Waves

TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates how Anderson localization affects photon correlations in disordered photonic lattices, revealing that the type of disorder influences the spectral symmetry and correlation signatures.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that density-density correlations distinguish between diagonal and off-diagonal disorder in Anderson localized waves, highlighting spectral symmetry differences.

Findings

Density-density correlations differ between disorder types

Spectral symmetry exists in off-diagonal disorder

Localization behavior is similar despite disorder differences

Abstract

When light waves propagate through disordered photonic lattices, they can eventually become localized due to multiple scattering effects. Here we show experimentally that while the evolution and localization of the photon density distribution is similar in the two cases of diagonal and off-diagonal disorder, the density-density correlation carries a distinct signature of the type of disorder. We show that these differences reflect a symmetry in the spectrum and eigenmodes that exists in off-diagonally disordered lattices but is absent in lattices with diagonal disorder.