47 research outputs found
Pump-induced Exceptional Points in Lasers
We demonstrate that the above-threshold behavior of a laser can be strongly
affected by exceptional points which are induced by pumping the laser
nonuniformly. At these singularities, the eigenstates of the non-Hermitian
operator which describes the lasing modes coalesce. In their vicinity, the
laser may turn off even when the overall pump power deposited in the system is
increased. Such signatures of a pump- induced exceptional point can be
experimentally probed with coupled ridge or microdisk lasers.Comment: 4.5 pages, 4 figures, final version including additional FDTD dat
Multi-electron transitions induced by neutron impact on helium
We explore excitation and ionization by neutron impact as a novel tool for
the investigation of electron-electron correlations in helium. We present
single and double ionization spectra calculated in accurate numerical ab-initio
simulations for incoming neutrons with kinetic energies of up to 150 keV. The
resulting electron spectra are found to be fundamentally different from
photoioniza- tion or charged particle impact due to the intrinsic many-body
character of the interaction. In particular, doubly excited resonances that are
strongly suppressed in electron or photon impact become prominent. The ratio of
double to single ionization is found to differ significantly from those of
photon and charged particle impact.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Scalable numerical approach for the steady-state ab initio laser theory
We present an efficient and flexible method for solving the non-linear lasing
equations of the steady-state ab initio laser theory. Our strategy is to solve
the underlying system of partial differential equations directly, without the
need of setting up a parametrized basis of constant flux states. We validate
this approach in one-dimensional as well as in cylindrical systems, and
demonstrate its scalability to full-vector three-dimensional calculations in
photonic-crystal slabs. Our method paves the way for efficient and accurate
simulations of lasing structures which were previously inaccessible.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure
Spawning rings of exceptional points out of Dirac cones
The Dirac cone underlies many unique electronic properties of graphene and
topological insulators, and its band structure--two conical bands touching at a
single point--has also been realized for photons in waveguide arrays, atoms in
optical lattices, and through accidental degeneracy. Deformations of the Dirac
cone often reveal intriguing properties; an example is the quantum Hall effect,
where a constant magnetic field breaks the Dirac cone into isolated Landau
levels. A seemingly unrelated phenomenon is the exceptional point, also known
as the parity-time symmetry breaking point, where two resonances coincide in
both their positions and widths. Exceptional points lead to counter-intuitive
phenomena such as loss-induced transparency, unidirectional transmission or
reflection, and lasers with reversed pump dependence or single-mode operation.
These two fields of research are in fact connected: here we discover the
ability of a Dirac cone to evolve into a ring of exceptional points, which we
call an "exceptional ring." We experimentally demonstrate this concept in a
photonic crystal slab. Angle-resolved reflection measurements of the photonic
crystal slab reveal that the peaks of reflectivity follow the conical band
structure of a Dirac cone from accidental degeneracy, whereas the complex
eigenvalues of the system are deformed into a two-dimensional flat band
enclosed by an exceptional ring. This deformation arises from the dissimilar
radiation rates of dipole and quadrupole resonances, which play a role
analogous to the loss and gain in parity-time symmetric systems. Our results
indicate that the radiation that exists in any open system can fundamentally
alter its physical properties in ways previously expected only in the presence
of material loss and gain
Geometric aspects of space-time reflection symmetry in quantum mechanics
For nearly two decades, much research has been carried out on properties of physical systems described by Hamiltonians that are not Hermitian in the conventional sense, but are symmetric under space-time reflection; that is, they exhibit PT symmetry. Such Hamiltonians can be used to model the behavior of closed quantum systems, but they can also be replicated in open systems for which gain and loss are carefully balanced, and this has been implemented in laboratory experiments for a wide range of systems. Motivated by these ongoing research activities, we investigate here a particular theoretical aspect of the subject by unraveling the geometric structures of Hilbert spaces endowed with the parity and time-reversal operations, and analyze the characteristics ofPT -symmetric Hamiltonians. A canonical relation between aPT -symmetric operator and a Hermitian operator is established in a geometric setting. The quadratic form corresponding to the parity operator, in particular, gives rise to a natural partition of the Hilbert space into two halves corresponding to states having positive and negative PT norm. Positive definiteness of the norm can be restored by introducing a conjugation operator C ; this leads to a positive-definite inner product in terms of CPT conjugation