Interdimensional optical isospectrality inspired by graph networks

A network picture has been applied to various physical and biological systems to understand their governing mechanisms intuitively. Utilizing discretization schemes, both electrical and optical materials can also be interpreted as abstract graph networks composed of couplings (edges) between local elements (vertices) that define the correlation between material structures and wave flows. Nonetheless, the fertile structural degrees of freedom in graph theory have not been fully exploited in physics owing to the suppressed long-range interaction between far-off elements. Here, by exploiting the mathematical similarity between Hamiltonians in different dimensions, we propose the design of reduced-dimensional optical structures that perfectly preserve the level statistics of disordered graph networks with significant long-range coupling. We show that the disorder-induced removal of the level degeneracy in high-degree networks allows their isospectral projection to one-dimensional structures without any disconnection. This interdimensional isospectrality between high and low-degree graph-like structures enables the ultimate simplification of broadband multilevel devices, from three-to one-dimensional structures. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America