![]() ![]() This new class of disorder transcends the mechanism that Phil Anderson considered in 1958, since his calculations were based on the assumption that no interactions take place with the environment. Just recently, the Rostock professor and his graduate students Sebastian Weidemann and Mark Kremer made a surprising discovery: Every realistic physical system inevitably exchanges energy with its environment, and, as soon this energy exchange becomes disordered, (light) waves can also become localized. Since college, the intriguing properties of light and its interaction with matter have fascinated Alexander Szameit. Today we know that this effect, for which Phil Anderson won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics 1977, applies in general: Disorder can likewise suppress the propagation of sound waves or even light beams. ![]() This so-called 'Anderson localization' lies outside the scope of classical physics, and only a quantum-mechanical treatment of electrons as both particles and waves can explain the metal-insulator transition resulting from it. In 1958, Phil Anderson astonished the scientific community by predicting that an electrical conductor-such as copper-will suddenly lose its conductivity and turn into an insulator, as soon as its atomic lattice is perturbed beyond a critical level: In the jargon of physicists, "disorder" can bring the free motion of electrons to a halt and block any electrical current from flowing through a previously conductive material. ![]()
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