Lasing characteristics of Anderson localization modes in two-dimensional random photonic crystals

We show the first demonstration of two-dimensional Anderson localization (AL) of light in planar random photonic crystals, with direct near-field imaging by use of SNOM (Scanning Near-field Optical Microscope). We demonstrated two-dimensional random photonic crystal lasers to which structural randomness was introduced by carefully dislocating the positions of air holes. We show that only slight amount of randomness induces the extended Slow Bloch Modes to become Anderson localized. Furthermore, we perform FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain) computation algorithm to confirm the experimental results to be consistent with theoretical predictions. Our results, for the first time, spatially resolve a two-dimensional AL in the disordered photonic band gap structure by near-field imaging.