Taming the flow of light via active magneto-optical impurities

We demonstrate that the interplay of a magneto-optical layer sandwiched between two judiciously balanced gain and loss layers which are both birefringent with misaligned in-plane anisotropy, induces unidirectional electromagnetic modes. Embedding one such optically active non-reciprocal unit between a pair of birefringent Bragg reflectors, results in an exceptionally strong asymmetry in light transmission. Remarkably, such asymmetry persists regardless of the incident light polarization. This photonic architecture may be used as the building block for chip-scale non-reciprocal devices such as optical isolators and circulators. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America