Abstract

In disordered materials, the combination of multiple light scattering and optical interference induces the localization of light. This phenomenon is called Anderson localization which is widely observed in electron systems with random potentials. Experimental studies of Anderson localization of light have been performed over the last three decades [1]. However, most of those studies attempted to secure the evidence of light localization by macroscopic observation of the light scattered by disordered materials. Recently, we proposed the direct observation of light localization using GaN nanocolumn samples by near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM), and presented the evidence of the light localization by a histogram analysis of NSOM image and by showing the wavelength dependence of the position of the localized spots in NSOM images [2,3]. We also observed random lasing in GaN nanocolumn samples and discussed the lasing property from a viewpoint of Anderson localization [4]. In this study, we extracted the two-dimensional (2D) spatial dependence from the NSOM image to estimate the localization length in GaN nanocolumns.

© 2011 Optical Society of America