452 research outputs found
Decohering localized waves
In the absence of confinement localization of waves takes place due to
randomness or nonlinearity and relies on their phase coherence. We
quantitatively probe the sensitivity of localized wave packets to random phase
fluctuations and confirm the necessity of phase coherence for localization.
Decoherence resulting from a dynamical random environment leads to diffusive
spreading and destroys linear and nonlinear localization. We find that maximal
spreading is achieved for optimal phase fluctuation characteristics which is a
consequence of the competition between diffusion due to decoherence and
ballistic transport within the mean free path distance.Comment: Updated affiliatio
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