ANOMALOUS OPTICAL-PROPERTIES OF AMORPHOUS RANDOM MULTILAYERS AND ITS RELATION WITH THE CLASSICAL LOCALIZATION OF OPTICAL PROPAGATION

Optical properties of periodic amorphous semiconductor multilayers can be understood by the effective medium treatment. Once the randomness is introduced to amorphous semiconductor multilayers, two effects of t he randomness on the optical spectra are observed. One is a distortion of the interference patterns in transmittance and reflectance spectra . The other is the appearance of a randomness-related anomalous peak i n the reflectance spectrum whose height increases with the randomness in the thickness of the wed or the barrier layers. These effects are s tudied experimentally and by the simulation, and explained by the clas sical localization of the light propagation. The prospects for the app lication of the random multilayers studied in this work are discussed briefly.