The Role of Disorder in Elementary Photonic Components

Optical components from nanostructured materials such as photonic crystals have gained special interest for applications in elementary optical and photonic components such as waveguides, scatterers, attenuators and others for optoelectronic systems and components in quantum computation. Robust manufacturing concepts require the handling of systematic and erratic fabrication tolerances. Beyond that, the concept of ‘tailored disorder’ has reached the science and engineering field in which the deviation from order in the nanostructured morphology is intentionally employed for tailoring optical properties. In our work, we propose a theoretical approach based on first principles of electromagnetic wave propagation to study the influence of a tuned disorder of the nanostructured materials on the optical properties of various model components. Our results show that intentional inclusion of disorder can result in a particular spectral tuning of optical reflection and transmission properties, respectively.