Interferences and localization in disordered media with anisotropic structural correlations.

Anisotropic photonic structures play a vital role in tailoring micro- and nanoscale light-matter interactions. In this work, we investigate the interference and localization effects in two-dimensional disordered media containing dipolar scatterers with anisotropic positional correlations. We study the anisotropy-induced frequency shifts in the transmission spectra, which cannot be accounted for by the independent scattering approximation or effective medium theory. We reveal that the distribution of eigenmodes strongly depends on the anisotropic structural correlations, and in all cases, Anderson localized modes are observed although their spatial extent exhibits different degrees of anisotropy. By calculating the level statistics, we demonstrate that the introduction of anisotropy to structural correlations has nontrivial effects on the level spacing statistics, which can be somewhat captured by a critical distribution function that works in the metal–insulator transition regime. This work can provide physical insights into the wave aspects of light transport in disordered media due to anisotropic structural correlations and guide the design of novel nanophotonic devices based on resonant scatterers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]