Light Localization and Cooperative Coupling Effects in Aperiodic Vogel Spirals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that aperiodic Vogel spiral structures made of electric dipoles can support three-dimensional light localization, a phenomenon absent in traditional random media, revealing new insights into light-matter interactions in complex structures.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel demonstration of light localization in deterministic Vogel spiral arrays, highlighting the role of aperiodic correlations and collective effects in three-dimensional photonic media.

Findings

Light localization occurs in Vogel spirals but not in random media.

A light localization transition is identified via spectral analysis and finite-size scaling.

Vogel spirals enable strong light-matter coupling due to their structural correlations.

Abstract

By using the dyadic Green's matrix spectral method, we demonstrate that aperiodic deterministic Vogel spirals made of electric dipoles support light localization in three dimensions, an effect that does not occur in traditional uniform random media. We discover a light localization transition in Vogel spiral arrays embedded in three-dimensional space by evaluating the Thouless conductance, the level spacing statistics, and by performing a finite-size scaling. This light localization transition is different from the Anderson transition because Vogel spirals are deterministic structures. Moreover, this transition occurs when the vector character of light is fully taken into account, in contrast to what is expected for traditional uniform random media of point-like scatterers. We show that light localization in Vogel arrays is a collective phenomenon that involves the contribution of multiple length scales. Vogel spirals are suitable photonic platforms to localize light thanks to their distinctive structural correlation properties that enable collective electromagnetic excitations with strong light-matter coupling. Our results unveil the importance of aperiodic correlations for the engineering of photonic media with strongly enhanced light-matter coupling compared to the traditional periodic and homogeneous random media.