Breaking Anti-$\mathcal{PT}$ Symmetry by Spinning a Resonator
Abstract
Non-Hermitian systems, with symmetric or antisymmetric Hamiltonians under the parity-time () operations, can have entirely real eigenvalues. This fact has led to surprising discoveries such as loss-induced lasing and topological energy transfer. A merit of anti- systems is free of gain, but in recent efforts on making anti- devices, nonlinearity is still required. Here, counterintuitively, we show how to achieve anti- symmetry and its spontaneous breaking in a linear device by spinning a lossy resonator. Compared with a Hermitian spinning device, significantly enhanced optical isolation and ultrasensitive nanoparticle sensing are achievable in the anti--broken phase. In a broader view, our work provides a new tool to study anti- physics, with such a wide range of applications as anti- lasers, anti- gyroscopes, and anti- topological photonics or optomechanics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2003.04246,
title = {Breaking Anti-$\mathcal{PT}$ Symmetry by Spinning a Resonator},
author = {Huilai Zhang and Ran Huang and Sheng-Dian Zhang and Ying Li and Cheng-Wei Qiu and Franco Nori and Hui Jing},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.04246},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
10+14 pages, 3+6 figures, 2 tables, to be published in Nano Letters