Hybrid Bloch-Anderson localization of light

TL;DR

This paper explores how Bloch oscillations and Anderson localization interact in optical waveguides, showing experimental evidence of their interplay and how disorder affects light localization and oscillations.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental investigation of the combined effects of Bloch oscillations and Anderson localization in optical systems.

Findings

Bloch oscillations are gradually washed out with increasing disorder.

Disorder leads to symmetric stationary intensity distributions.

At high disorder, Bloch oscillations are completely suppressed.

Abstract

We investigate the interplay of Bloch oscillations and Anderson localization in optics. Gradual washing out of Bloch oscillations and the formation of nearly stationary averaged intensity distributions, which are symmetric for narrow and strongly asymmetric for broad input excitations, are observed experimentally in laser-written waveguide arrays. At large disorder levels Bloch oscillations are completely destroyed and both narrow and wide excitations lead to symmetric stationary averaged intensity distributions with exponentially decaying tails.