Localization and delocalization of light under oblique incidence

It is found experimentally that light is localized for a disordered binary multilayer, which is periodic on average and is composed of cryolite and antimonite, under oblique incidence. The localization length of p-polarized light increases with the incident angle, while it is almost a constant for s-polarized light, when the incident angle varies between 0° and 70°. This effect can be attributed to the vector nature of light, i.e., the reflection of p waves on the multilayer interfaces becomes small when the incident angle approaches Brewster’s angle. The corresponding localization lengths are calculated by the transfer matrix method. Our measurements agree with the simulation of the transfer matrix method, when the self-averaging effect plays a role.