Frequency dependence of localization length of an electromagnetic wave in a one-dimensional system

It is shown that the existence in the high-frequency limit of the localization length of an electromagnetic wave in a randomly layered system requires the presence of an infinitely large number of layers with different incommensurable optical paths. Moreover, the measure of the layers with optical paths that are multiples of any real number should equal zero. The localization length in the high-frequency limit is determined by the mean value of the layer thickness and impedance distribution only. The scaling behavior L-loc(k(0))similar tok(0)(-2) is observed only if the mean value tends to zero (corresponding to a delta-correlated process). (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.