Abstract

Local density of states (LDOS) uniquely describes the available optical eigenmodes in which photons can exist at a specific spatial location. The LDOS controls the spontaneous emission, which is a fundamental phenomenon associated with the creation of light from the source. In disordered photonic media, the average LDOS is independent of the photonic properties, and only scales with the effective refractive index. Instead, strong sample-to-sample fluctuations of the LDOS are the characteristics of a disordered medium. Qualitative calculations of the fluctuations of the LDOS were previously made in the contexts of the nonlinear sigma model [1] and the intensity correlations in speckle patterns [2]. To date, however, there have not been any experiments to confirm this theory. Therefore, we study spontaneous emission of emitters in the disordered photonic media.

© 2009 IEEE