Shaping and harnessing disorder in photonic materials

Many photonic materials leverage periodic structures to generate intriguing properties, such as birefringence, coloration, or transmission gaps. However, recent work has highlighted the potential of correlated disordered materials (viz., aperiodic non-Poissonian structures) to achieve the same functions as crystals, and even give rise to unique phenomena like Anderson localization. The majority of existing results on correlated disordered media address only a few classes of disorder, e.g. stealthy hyperuniform systems. Furthermore, they are largely limited to small systems, consisting of only a few hundreds or thousands of particles. Both constraints stem from limitations in the numerical algorithms used to generate correlated disordered structures, and in the algorithms used for their material analysis. In this talk, I will outline how the Fast Reciprocal-Space Correlator (FReSCo) addresses the issue by generating interesting materials using non-uniform Fast Fourier Transforms. I will show that this strategy allows us to generate truly arbitrary structures motivated by photonics applications, at lightning speed. I will then show that, using a Green's Tensor formalism, we can analyze large systems and design relevant photonic materials at the multiple-scattering level.