TY - JOUR
T1 - Antiparity-Time Symmetry in Passive Nanophotonics
AU - Fan, Heng
AU - Chen, Jiayang
AU - Zhao, Zitong
AU - Wen, Jianming
AU - Huang, Yu Ping
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/11/18
Y1 - 2020/11/18
N2 - Parity-time (PT) symmetry in non-Hermitian optical systems promises distinct optical effects and applications not found in conservative optics. Its counterpart, anti-PT symmetry, subscribes another class of intriguing optical phenomena and implies complementary techniques for exotic light manipulation. Despite exciting progress, so far, anti-PT symmetry has only been realized in bulky systems or with optical gain. Here, we report an on-chip realization of non-Hermitian optics with anti-PT symmetry by using a fully passive, nanophotonic platform consisting of three evanescently coupled waveguides. By depositing a metal film on the center waveguide to introduce strong loss, an anti-PT system is realized. Using microheaters to tune the waveguides' refractive indices, striking behaviors are observed such as equal power splitting, synchronized amplitude modulation, phase-controlled dissipation, and transition from anti-PT symmetry to its broken phase. Our results highlight exotic anti-Hermitian nanophotonics to be consolidated with conventional circuits on the same chip, whereby valuable chip devices can be created for quantum optics studies and scalable information processing.
AB - Parity-time (PT) symmetry in non-Hermitian optical systems promises distinct optical effects and applications not found in conservative optics. Its counterpart, anti-PT symmetry, subscribes another class of intriguing optical phenomena and implies complementary techniques for exotic light manipulation. Despite exciting progress, so far, anti-PT symmetry has only been realized in bulky systems or with optical gain. Here, we report an on-chip realization of non-Hermitian optics with anti-PT symmetry by using a fully passive, nanophotonic platform consisting of three evanescently coupled waveguides. By depositing a metal film on the center waveguide to introduce strong loss, an anti-PT system is realized. Using microheaters to tune the waveguides' refractive indices, striking behaviors are observed such as equal power splitting, synchronized amplitude modulation, phase-controlled dissipation, and transition from anti-PT symmetry to its broken phase. Our results highlight exotic anti-Hermitian nanophotonics to be consolidated with conventional circuits on the same chip, whereby valuable chip devices can be created for quantum optics studies and scalable information processing.
KW - beam splitter
KW - exceptional point
KW - integrated optics
KW - optical phase transition
KW - parity-time symmetry
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U2 - 10.1021/acsphotonics.0c01053
DO - 10.1021/acsphotonics.0c01053
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85085682278
VL - 7
SP - 3035
EP - 3041
JO - ACS Photonics
JF - ACS Photonics
IS - 11
ER -