For the first time, researchers from the University of Central Florida have shown how light behaves in non-Hermitian arrangements.
In non-Hermitian systems, allowed energy values are used to create self-Intersecting surfaces with unique branch points. At an exceptional point, the surfaces cross into one another.
The team found that the light behaves differently in a changing system than it does in a unchanging one. Chiral state transfer is a behavior in which the output state is locked to the direction of the winding.
The findings, which were published recently in the journal Nature, could spur the development of novel mechanisms for light manipulation and promise profound implications for technologies such as high-precision light-based sensors.
The researchers were able to observe the evolution of laser light in the system when it varied along a closed path in the vicinity of an exceptional point.
A professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California says that the platform can be used to model some of the most puzzling physical phenomena.
The experimental observations challenge previous demonstrations but support recent theoretical predictions by the authors.
The output of a non-Hermitian optical system gets funneled into one of the two states depending on the direction in which a closed trajectory takes place
Other studies only looked at what happens in the input and output of the system. They couldn't see what happened in the process.
She says that the emulator can be used to monitor and dig into the dynamics of non-Hermitian systems.
The fundamental work is a step in the right direction.
"We will be able to engineer the variations of energy loss and gain which is needed for the realization of integrated but efficient and powerful optical technologies if we understand the underlying physics of non-Hermitian systems."
The technical skill that was required to perform the study was noted by the author.
Three women, including a graduate student, led the work. New research frontiers are opened up by their work. The computer they built was very powerful.
Lopez-Galmiche and Lopez-Aviles were both graduate students at the same time.
More information: Hadiseh Nasari et al, Observation of chiral state transfer without encircling an exceptional point, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04542-2 Journal information: Nature
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