Journal
NATURE PHOTONICS
Volume 8, Issue 7, Pages 524-529Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2014.133
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Basic Research Program of China [2012CB921804, 2011CBA00205]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [11104137, 11321063]
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China [BK2011554]
- Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education [20110091120015]
- DARPA QUINESS grant
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Compound-photonic structures with gain and loss(1) provide a powerful platform for testing various theoretical proposals on non-Hermitian parity-time-symmetric quantum mechanics(2-5) and initiate new possibilities for shaping optical beams and pulses beyond conservative structures. Such structures can be designed as optical analogues of complex parity-timesymmetric potentials with real spectra. However, the beam dynamics can exhibit unique features distinct from conservative systems due to non-trivial wave interference and phase-transition effects. Here, we experimentally realize parity-time-symmetric optics on a chip at the 1,550 nm wavelength in two directly coupled high-Q silica-microtoroid resonators with balanced effective gain and loss. With this composite system, we further implement switchable optical isolation with a non-reciprocal isolation ratio from -8 dB to +8 dB, by breaking time-reversal symmetry with gain-saturated nonlinearity in a large parameter-tunable space. Of importance, our scheme opens a door towards synthesizing novel microscale photonic structures for potential applications in optical isolators, on-chip light control and optical communications.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available