Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 254
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40425-6

Regular Article

Localization of electromagnetic waves in one-dimensional disordered media composed of magnetized plasma: dependence on the external magnetic field, incident angle and plasma density

Department of Physics, College of Science, Shiraz University, 71454 Shiraz, Iran

^a e-mail: abbasgh42@yahoo.com

Received: 17 July 2013
Received in final form: 25 September 2013
Published online: 10 December 2013

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a one-dimensional disordered system composed of magnetized plasma and dielectric layers. To introduce the disorder through the system, the width of the magnetized plasma layers is selected to be a uniformly distributed random number. Propagation of an obliquely incident electromagnetic wave in the disordered medium is studied. The transfer matrix method is used to calculate the transmittance and localization length of the incident wave. In the presence of disorder, both localized and extended states are present and the number of localized states increases with increasing the disorder level. For a high disorder level, there is a dip in the curve of localization length versus frequency which is attributed to the resonance of real part of the effective dielectric constant of the magnetized plasma. The transmission properties in terms of an external magnetic field and incident angle are investigated. We demonstrate that the localization length of the wave at each frequency can be effectively tuned by changing the external magnetic field as well as the incident angle. The localization length dip is shifted toward larger frequency with increasing the external magnetic field. The effects of plasma density on localization length are considered here. The localization length decreases with increasing plasma density. For larger plasma densities, the effects of the external magnetic field on localization behaviors become larger. We also study the dependence of localization features on the external magnetic field for a disordered structure at which the widths of the plasma layers have exponential distribution.