Effective medium theory for 2D disordered structures: a comparison to numerical simulations

We compare predictions of effective medium theories with the results of numerical modeling of linear optical properties of two-dimensional disordered dielectric structures. A type of Maxwell Garnett effective medium theory is found to be in good agreement with the results of the plane-wave-expansion computations for pseudo-random samples of nanoscale cylindrical rods in a host medium, except for very high volume fractions of the rods. We analyze the extent and the reasons of the deviations of the effective medium theory from the numerical results, as well as the degree of applicability of our numerical model to real random samples of porous dielectrics.