English

Perfect Transmission through Disordered Media

Classical Physics 2017-05-01 v2 Optics

Abstract

The transmission of a wave through a randomly chosen `pile of plates' typically decreases exponentially with the number of plates, a phenomenon closely related to Anderson localisation. In apparent contradiction we construct disordered planar permittivity profiles which are complex-valued (i.e. have reactive and dissipative properties) that appear to vary randomly with position, yet are one-way reflectionless for all angles of incidence and exhibit a transmission coefficient of unity. We contrast these complex-valued 'random' planar permittivity profiles with a family of real-valued, two-way reflectionless and perfectly transmitting disordered permittivity profiles that function only for a single angle of incidence and frequency.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.02451,
  title  = {Perfect Transmission through Disordered Media},
  author = {Chris King and Simon Horsley and Tom Philbin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.02451},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

10 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:16:53.539Z