Energy variation in stochastically driven light walks [Invited]

The nature of the medium strongly influences the spreading behavior of a traveling wavepacket, which can range from ballistic and diffusive to fully localized. A classic example of complete localization is Anderson localization, where all transport within a crystal halts due to scattering from disorder, often caused by scale or positional perturbations that conserve energy. In this study, we demonstrate through simulations that photons traveling through a one-dimensional uniform lattice subjected to stochastic drivings can exhibit analogous spreading effects in terms of photon intensity within the energy parameter space. In particular, while both the average intensity and variance grow exponentially for all disorder configurations, three distinctive regimes are identified by examining the ratio between the variance and mean, which exhibits different trends against evolution time and disorder strength. The simulations are conducted using photonic synthetic lattices, implemented via coupled fiber loops. We expect that our findings will contribute to the exploration of spatiotemporal topology and advance the development of future high-power lasing devices.