Rights statement: © 2019 American Physical Society
Accepted author manuscript, 7.98 MB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Non-Hermitian defect states from lifetime differences
AU - Bosch, Marti
AU - Malzard, Simon
AU - Hentschel, Martina
AU - Schomerus, Henning
N1 - © 2019 American Physical Society
PY - 2019/12/2
Y1 - 2019/12/2
N2 - Non-Hermitian systems provide new avenues to create topological defect states. An unresolved general question is how much the formation of these states depends on asymmetric backscattering, be it nonreciprocal as in the non-Hermitian skin effect or reciprocal as encountered between the internal states of asymmetric microresonators. Here, we demonstrate in a concrete, practically accessible setting of a lossy coupled-resonator optical waveguide that non-Hermitian defect states can exist in open optical systems due to lifetime differences, without the need for asymmetric backscattering within or between the individual resonators. We apply our findings to a finite system of coupled circular resonators perturbed by nanoparticles, following the concept of creating an interface by inverting the position of the nanoparticles in half of the chain. We compare a coupled-mode tight-binding approximation to full-wave numerical simulations, showing that spectrally isolated defect states can indeed be implemented in this simple non-Hermitian photonic device.
AB - Non-Hermitian systems provide new avenues to create topological defect states. An unresolved general question is how much the formation of these states depends on asymmetric backscattering, be it nonreciprocal as in the non-Hermitian skin effect or reciprocal as encountered between the internal states of asymmetric microresonators. Here, we demonstrate in a concrete, practically accessible setting of a lossy coupled-resonator optical waveguide that non-Hermitian defect states can exist in open optical systems due to lifetime differences, without the need for asymmetric backscattering within or between the individual resonators. We apply our findings to a finite system of coupled circular resonators perturbed by nanoparticles, following the concept of creating an interface by inverting the position of the nanoparticles in half of the chain. We compare a coupled-mode tight-binding approximation to full-wave numerical simulations, showing that spectrally isolated defect states can indeed be implemented in this simple non-Hermitian photonic device.
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevA.100.063801
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevA.100.063801
M3 - Journal article
VL - 100
JO - Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
JF - Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
SN - 2469-9926
M1 - 063801
ER -