An investigation of transverse localization in a disordered waveguide array containing plasma materials

We investigate wave propagation through a disordered waveguide array composed of plasma materials. We first consider a system in which both the low and high index regions are plasma materials. To introduce disorder through the system, the electron plasma densities of the high index regions are selected to be random numbers. We study the effect of disorder strength on transverse localization. Our numerical results reveal that increasing the disorder level improves the quality of the transverse localization. The dependence of the localization features on the plasma density of the low index media and average of the plasma density of the high-index regions is also studied. Localization degrades with increasing plasma density of the low index media. However, transverse localization improves with increasing average plasma density of the high-index regions. Thus, using plasma materials in the disordered photonic lattices makes it possible to control transverse localization characteristics with plasma parameters, as well as applying an external magnetic field. Second, we consider a disordered waveguide array composed alternately of normal and plasma materials. The influence of the operating wavelength variation on the transverse localization is also discussed in this disordered system. It is demonstrated that the effective width of the injected wave at the output end increases with increasing wavelength. In this case, the increase of the average refractive index of normal materials leads to the improvement of transverse localization. (papers)