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Spontaneous Parity-Time Symmetry Breaking in Moving Media

Optics 2015-06-19 v1

Abstract

Optical instabilities in moving media are linked to a spontaneous parity-time symmetry breaking of the system. It is shown that in general the time evolution of the electromagnetic waves in moving media is determined by a non-Hermitian parity-time symmetric operator. For lossless systems the frequency spectrum of the time evolution operator may be complex valued, and has a mirror symmetry with respect to the real-frequency axis. The possibility of optical amplification of a light pulse in the broken parity-time symmetry regime is demonstrated.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1406.2537,
  title  = {Spontaneous Parity-Time Symmetry Breaking in Moving Media},
  author = {M. G. Silveirinha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.2537},
  year   = {2015}
}

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38 pages