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Hyper-transport of light and stochastic acceleration by evolving disorder

Nature Physics volume 8, pages 912–917 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

In 1958, Philip Anderson argued that disorder can transform a conductor into an insulator, as multiple scattering from disorder brings transport to a complete halt. This concept, known as Anderson localization, has been tested in electronic, optical, acoustic and matter wave systems, which have all shown that disorder generally works to arrest transport. One major condition is common to all work on Anderson localization: for localization to take place, the underlying potential must be constant in time (frozen). Otherwise, if the disorder is dynamically evolving, localization breaks down and diffusive transport is expected to prevail. However, it seems natural to ask: can disorder increase the transport rate beyond diffusion, possibly even beyond ballistic transport? Here, we use a paraxial optical setting as a model system, and demonstrate experimentally and numerically that an evolving random potential gives rise to stochastic acceleration, which causes an initial wave packet to expand at a rate faster than ballistic, while its transverse momentum spectrum continuously expands. We discuss the universal aspects of the phenomenon relevant for all wave systems containing disorder.

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Figure 1: Experimental scheme for studying hyper-transport of light by virtue of evolving disorder.
Figure 2: Experiments demonstrating hyper-transport of light, by controlling the evolution rate of spatial disorder.
Figure 3: Experiments and simulations showing the evolution of the momentum power spectrum of the wave packet propagating through the disordered photonic medium.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, by the Israel Science Foundation and by the USA–Israel Binational Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department and Solid State Institute, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel

    Liad Levi, Yevgeny Krivolapov, Shmuel Fishman & Mordechai Segev

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  1. Liad Levi
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  2. Yevgeny Krivolapov
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  3. Shmuel Fishman
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  4. Mordechai Segev
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Contributions

The experiments were carried out by L.L. All authors contributed to this research.

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Correspondence to Mordechai Segev.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Levi, L., Krivolapov, Y., Fishman, S. et al. Hyper-transport of light and stochastic acceleration by evolving disorder. Nature Phys 8, 912–917 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2463

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