Université de Fribourg

Experimental tuning of transport regimes in hyperuniform disordered photonic materials

Aubry, Geoffroy J. ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Kuhl, Ulrich ; Legrand, Olivier ; Scheffold, Frank ; Mortessagne, Fabrice

In: Physical Review Letters, 2020, vol. 125, no. 12, p. 127402

We present wave transport experiments in hyperuniform disordered arrays of cylinders with high dielectric permittivity. Using microwaves, we show that the same material can display transparency, photon diffusion, Anderson localization, or a full band gap, depending on the frequency ν of the electromagnetic wave. Interestingly, we find a second weaker band gap, which appears to be related to...

Université de Fribourg

Controlling dispersion forces between small particles with artificially created random light fields

Brügger, Georges ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Scheffold, Frank ; Sáenz, Juan José

In: Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, p. 7460

Appropriate combinations of laser beams can be used to trap and manipulate small particles with optical tweezers as well as to induce significant optical binding forces between particles. These interaction forces are usually strongly anisotropic depending on the interference landscape of the external fields. This is in contrast with the familiar isotropic, translationally invariant, van der Waals...

Université de Fribourg

Speckle fluctuations resolve the interdistance between incoherent point sources in complex media

Carminati, R. ; Cwilich, G. ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Sáenz, J. J.

In: Physical Review A, 2015, vol. 91, no. 2, p. 023807

We study the fluctuations of the light emitted by two identical incoherent point sources in a disordered environment. The intensity-intensity correlation function and the speckle contrast, obtained after proper temporal and configurational averaging, encode the relative distance between the two sources. This suggests the intriguing possibility that intensity measurements at only one point in...

Université de Fribourg

Band gap formation and Anderson localization in disordered photonic materials with structural correlations

Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Engel, Michael ; Sáenz, Juan José ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017, vol. 114, no. 36, p. 9570–9574

Disordered dielectric materials with structural correlations show unconventional optical behavior: They can be transparent to long-wavelength radiation, while at the same time have isotropic band gaps in another frequency range. This phenomenon raises fundamental questions concerning photon transport through disordered media. While optical transparency in these materials is robust against...

Université de Fribourg

Role of short-range order and hyperuniformity in the formation of band gaps in disordered photonic materials

Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Engel, Michael ; Damasceno, Pablo F. ; Muller, Nicolas ; Haberko, Jakub ; Glotzer, Sharon C. ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Physical Review Letters, 2016, vol. 117, no. 5, p. 053902

We study photonic band gap formation in two-dimensional high-refractive-index disordered materials where the dielectric structure is derived from packing disks in real and reciprocal space. Numerical calculations of the photonic density of states demonstrate the presence of a band gap for all polarizations in both cases. We find that the band gap width is controlled by the increase in...

Université de Fribourg

Strong magnetic response of submicron Silicon particles in the infrared

García-Etxarri, A. ; Gómez-Medina, R. ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; López, C. ; Chantada, Laura ; Scheffold, Frank ; Aizpurua, J. ; Nieto-Vesperinas, M. ; Sáenz, Juan José

In: Optic Express, 2011, vol. 19, no. 6, p. 4815

High-permittivity dielectric particles with resonant magnetic properties are being explored as constitutive elements of new metamaterials and devices. Magnetic properties of low-loss dielectric nanoparticles in the visible or infrared are not expected due to intrinsic low refractive index of optical media in these regimes. Here we analyze the dipolar electric and magnetic response of lossless...

Université de Fribourg

Negative scattering asymmetry parameter for dipolar particles: Unusual reduction of the transport mean free path and radiation pressure

Gómez-Medina, R. ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Yépez, M. ; Scheffold, Frank ; Nieto-Vesperinas, M. ; Sáenz, Juan José

In: Physical Review A - Atomic, molecular and optical physics, 2012, vol. 85, no. 3, p. 035802

Lossless dielectric nanospheres (made of nonmagnetic materials) with relatively low refraction index may present strong electric and magnetic dipolar resonances. We establish a relationship between the optical force from a plane wave on small electric and magnetic dipolar particles, the transport cross section, and the scattering asymmetry parameter g. In this way we predict negative g (that...

Université de Fribourg

Transition from light diffusion to localization in three-dimensional amorphous dielectric networks near the band edge

Haberko, Jakub ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Scheffold, Frank

In: Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 4867

AbstractLocalization of light is the photon analog of electron localization in disordered lattices, for whose discovery Anderson received the Nobel prize in 1977. The question about its existence in open three-dimensional materials has eluded an experimental and full theoretical verification for decades. Here we study numerically electromagnetic vector wave transmittance through realistic...

Université de Fribourg

Unequivocal signatures of the crossover to Anderson localization in realistic models of disordered quasi-one-dimensional materials

Lopez-Bezanilla, Alejandro ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Roche, Stephan ; Sáenz, Juan José

In: Physical Review B, 2018, vol. 98, no. 23, p. 235423

The only unequivocal known criterion for single-parameter scaling Anderson localization relies on the knowledge of the full conductance statistics. To date, theoretical studies have been restricted to model systems with symmetric scatterers, hence lacking universality. We present an in-depth statistical study of conductance distributions P(g), in disordered ‘micrometer-long’ carbon...

Université de Fribourg

Light induced inverse-square law interactions between nanoparticles: “mock gravity” at the nanoscale

Luis-Hita, J. ; Marqués, M. I. ; Delgado-Buscalioni, R. ; Sousa, N. de ; Froufe-Pérez, Luis S. ; Scheffold, Frank ; Sáenz, J. J.

In: Physical Review Letters, 2019, vol. 123, no. 14, p. 143201

The interaction forces between identical resonant molecules or nanoparticles, optically induced by a quasimonochromatic isotropic random light field, are theoretically analyzed. In general, the interaction force exhibits a far-field oscillatory behavior at separation distances larger than the light wavelength. However, we show that the oscillations disappear when the frequency of the random...