Using Microwave and Macroscopic Samples of Dielectric Solids to Study the Photonic Properties of Disordered Photonic Bandgap Materials

Disordered structures offer new mechanisms for forming photonic bandgaps and unprecedented freedom in functional-defect designs. To circumvent the computational challenges of disordered systems, we construct modular macroscopic samples of the new class of PBG materials and use microwaves to characterize their scale-invariant photonic properties, in an easy and inexpensive manner.