Dispersion characteristics of electromagnetic excitations in a disordered one-dimensional lattice of coupled microresonators

Localized photonic modes are studied in a non-ideal chain of coupled microcavities with the use of the virtual crystal approximation. The approach proves sufficient to elucidate the effects of varying composition and nearest-neighbor distances on the spectrum. It permits to obtain the density of states of the studied quasiparticles as well as the dispersion dependence of collective excitation frequencies on defect concentration. Based upon the developed description of ideal photonic structures we proceed to study a non-ideal polaritonic crystal constituted by an array of spatially ordered cavities containing atomic clusters. Frequency, effective mass and group velocity of polaritons are analytically derived as functions of vacancy concentration.