# Transverse Anderson localization of surface plasmon polaritons

## TL;DR

This paper experimentally demonstrates how increasing disorder in arrays of coupled waveguides causes surface plasmon polaritons to become transversely localized, revealing disorder's impact on plasmon propagation.

## Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of transverse Anderson localization of surface plasmon polaritons in disordered waveguide arrays.

## Key findings

- Localization increases with disorder
- Real-space and Fourier-space imaging confirm localization
- Leakage radiation microscopy effectively visualizes plasmon behavior

## Abstract

We investigate the effect of disorder on the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons in arrays of evanescently coupled dielectric loaded surface plasmon polariton waveguides. Diagonal disorder is implemented by randomly varying the heights of the waveguides. Real-space as well as Fourier-space images of the surface plasmon polariton intensity distribution in the waveguide arrays are recorded by leakage radiation microscopy. With these techniques we experimentally demonstrate the transverse localization of surface plasmon polaritons with increasing disorder.