Exceptional points in anisotropic planar microcavities
Optics
2017-03-01 v1
Abstract
Planar microcavities allow the control and manipulation of spin-polarization, manifested in phenomena like the optical spin Hall effect due to the intrinsic polarization mode splitting. Here, we study a transparent microcavity with broken rotational symmetry, realized by aligning the optical axis of a uniaxial cavity material in the cavity plane. We demonstrate that the in-plane optical anisotropy gives rise to exceptional points in the dispersion relation, which occur pair-wise, are circularly polarized, and are cores of polarization vortices. These exceptional points are a result of the non-Hermitian character of the system, and are in close relationship to singular optical axes in absorptive biaxial systems.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.07653,
title = {Exceptional points in anisotropic planar microcavities},
author = {Steffen Richter and Tom Michalsky and Chris Sturm and Bernd Rosenow and Marius Grundmann and Rüdiger Schmidt-Grund},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.07653},
year = {2017}
}