Dynamically Encircling Exceptional Points: Exact Evolution and Polarization State Conversion
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PhysRevLett.118.093002.pdf
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Author(s)
Hassan, Absar U.
Khajavikhan, Mercedeh
Christodoulides, Demetrios N.
Zhen, Bo
Soljacic, Marin
Date Issued
March 2017
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Hassan, Absar U. et al. “Dynamically Encircling Exceptional Points: Exact Evolution and Polarization State Conversion.” Physical Review Letters 118.9 (2017): n. pag. © 2017 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We show that a two-level non-Hermitian Hamiltonian with constant off-diagonal exchange elements can be analyzed exactly when the underlying exceptional point is perfectly encircled in the complex plane. The state evolution of this system is explicitly obtained in terms of an ensuing transfer matrix, even for large encirclements, regardless of adiabatic conditions. Our results clearly explain the direction-dependent nature of this process and why in the adiabatic limit its outcome is dominated by a specific eigenstate—irrespective of initial conditions. Moreover, numerical simulations suggest that this mechanism can still persist in the presence of nonlinear effects. We further show that this robust process can be harnessed to realize an optical omnipolarizer: a configuration that generates a desired polarization output regardless of the input polarization state, while from the opposite direction it always produces the counterpart eigenstate.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.093002
