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Engineering of light confinement in strongly scattering disordered media

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 720–725 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Disordered photonic materials can diffuse and localize light through random multiple scattering, offering opportunities to study mesoscopic phenomena, control light–matter interactions, and provide new strategies for photonic applications. Light transport in such media is governed by photonic modes characterized by resonances with finite spectral width and spatial extent. Considerable steps have been made recently towards control over the transport using wavefront shaping techniques. The selective engineering of individual modes, however, has been addressed only theoretically. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the possibility to engineer the confinement and the mutual interaction of modes in a two-dimensional disordered photonic structure. The strong light confinement is achieved at the fabrication stage by an optimization of the structure, and an accurate and local tuning of the mode resonance frequencies is achieved via post-fabrication processes. To show the versatility of our technique, we selectively control the detuning between overlapping localized modes and observe both frequency crossing and anti-crossing behaviours, thereby paving the way for the creation of open transmission channels in strongly scattering media.

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Figure 1: Near-field imaging of localized modes.
Figure 2: Statistical distributions of the PL intensity.
Figure 3: Decay lengths of localized modes.
Figure 4: Reversible spectral tuning of localized modes.
Figure 5: Local engineering of localized modes.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge M. Burresi for discussions and for critically reading the manuscript, and F. Pratesi and G. M. Conley for discussions. This work is financially supported by the Eu NoE Nanophotonics for Energy Efficiency, the ERC through the Advanced Grant PhotBots and ENI S.p.A.

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Author notes

  1. Francesco Riboli, Silvia Vignolini, Kevin Vynck, Pierre Barthelemy & Andrea Fiore

    Present address: Present addresses: Department of Physics, University of Trento, via Sommarive 14, 38123 Povo (TN), Italy (F.R.); Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK (S.V.); Laboratoire Photonique, Numérique et Nanosciences (LP2N), UMR 5298, CNRS - IOGS - Université Bordeaux, Institut d’Optique d’Aquitaine, 33400 Talence, France (K.V.); Quantum Transport, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, TU Delft, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands (P.B.); COBRA Research Institute, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands (A.F.).,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy, Via N. Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy

    Francesco Riboli, Niccolò Caselli, Silvia Vignolini, Francesca Intonti, Kevin Vynck, Pierre Barthelemy, Massimo Gurioli & Diederik S. Wiersma

  2. Department of Physics, University of Florence, Via G. Sansone 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy

    Francesco Riboli, Niccolò Caselli, Silvia Vignolini, Francesca Intonti, Massimo Gurioli & Diederik S. Wiersma

  3. Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology, CNR, Via C. Romano 42, 00156 Roma, Italy

    Annamaria Gerardino

  4. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

    Laurent Balet, Lianhe H. Li & Andrea Fiore

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  1. Francesco Riboli
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Contributions

F.R. designed and engineered the samples; M.G. conceived the post-fabrication tuning of random modes; N.C., F.I., F.R. and S.V. performed the experiments; F.R. and N.C. performed the data analysis with help from M.G., K.V., F.I., P.B. and D.S.W.; A.G., L.L., L.B. and A.F. fabricated the samples; F.R. and M.G. wrote the paper with support from K.V., F.I. and N.C., with appraisals and inputs from D.S.W.; F.R., K.V., P.B., D.S.W. and M.G. contributed to the theoretical analysis. All authors contributed to the general discussion.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesco Riboli.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Riboli, F., Caselli, N., Vignolini, S. et al. Engineering of light confinement in strongly scattering disordered media. Nature Mater 13, 720–725 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3966

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