Electromagnetic Absorption in a Disordered Medium near a Photon Mobility Edge

Abstract

A frequency regime in which electromagnetic waves in a strongly disordered medium undergo Anderson localization in $d=3\mathrm{}$ dimensions is suggested. In the presence of weak dissipation in $d=2+\epsilon$ it is shown that the renormalized energy absorption coefficient increases as the photon frequency $\omega$ approaches a mobility edge ${\omega }^{*}$ from the conducting side as $\alpha \sim {({\omega }^{*}-\omega )}^{-\frac{\mathrm{}(d-2\mathrm{})\mathrm{}\nu }{2}}$, $\nu =\frac{1}{\epsilon }$. This mobility edge occurs at a frequency compatible with the Ioffe-Regel condition.