Abstract

Materials are often useful because they display correlations at scales much larger than that of their elementary components, which confers them a plethora of desirable properties (transparency, rigidity, color, etc.). The most natural example is that of crystals: their periodicity, which creates correlations across all scales, from the atom to the bulk material. However, in nature, many systems, from bird feathers to fish scales, display structural correlations at long range only, without looking ordered, let alone periodic, at smaller scales.  Engineering such correlated yet disordered systems is a challenge from both the fundamental and practical aspects. In this poster, I present an algorithmic solution to engineer correlated disordered structures with arbitrary features in their Fourier-space correlations that is many orders of magnitude faster than past strategies.  Using this Fast Reciprocal-Space Correlator (FReSCo), I showcase an example application to photonics.  From a simple heuristic, I show that one may generate a new class of structures, called gyromorphs, that display liquid-like isotropic structure at short range but Bragg-like peaks in their spectrum. I show that these structures display isotropic bandgaps, and may be generalized to more intricate structures, in either 2d or 3d—showing that FReSCo is a promising tool to discover functional disordered materials.