Anderson localization without eigenstates in photonic quantum walks

Anderson localization is ubiquitous in wavy systems with strong static and uncorrelated disorder. The delicate destructive interference underlying Anderson localization is usually washed out in the presence of temporal fluctuations or aperiodic drives in the Hamiltonian, leading to delocalization and restoring transport. However, in one-dimensional lattices with off diagonal disorder, Anderson localization can persist for arbitrary time-dependent drivings that do not break a hidden conservation law originating from the chiral symmetry, leading to the dubbed “localization without eigenstates.” Here it is shown that such an intriguing phenomenon can be observed in discrete-time photonic quantum walks with static disorder applied to the coin operator and can be extended to non-Hermitian dynamics as well.