Non-Hermitian Interactions in Photonics
Abstract
Major Goals: The objective of this project is to investigate new types of optical interactions and couplings based on the synergy of two emerging fields of non-Hermitian photonics and topological physics. Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians are in principle very general and their resulting interactions can be judiciously designed extremely versatile, shaping the symmetry and topology of exotic light states in photonic systems. To further promote the scope of non-Hermitian photonics, we aim here to develop a general fundamental framework for exploring and discovering different types of non-Hermiticity mediated novel interactions beyond recently studied parity-time symmetry, enabling new paradigms for dynamic control of light-matter interactions at micro- and nanoscale for innovative photonics symmetry and topology. The intellectual merit of this proposed activity is based upon very recent developments of non-Hermitian and topological photonics that make use of powerful concepts of symmetry and topology -- the two-guiding principles for understanding and synthesizing new phases of light in artificial materials, not available in nature. Although the connections between non-Hermitian and topological photonics are rather vague since they are emerging from different aspects of quantum physics, we propose to develop a fundamental framework to initiate the effective coupling of these two important yet different areas through different types of non-Hermitian interactions, including active controllable topological interaction, imaginary gauge field, and its resulting unidirectional coupling, as well as arbitrary complex-valued photonic couplings. These new types of non-Hermitian interactions will deliver novel active and reconfigurable photonics functionality ranging from topological insulating phases, and chiral resonances, to the dynamical control of lasers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 31, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1221398
Entities
People
- Liang Feng
Organizations
- University of Pennsylvania