Coherent Perfect Rotation

Abstract

Two classes of conservative, linear, optical rotary effects (optical activity and Faraday rotation) are distinguished by their behavior under time reversal. In analogy with coherent perfect absorption, where counterpropagating light fields are controllably converted into other degrees of freedom, we show that only time-odd (Faraday) rotation is capable of coherent perfect rotation in a linear and conservative medium, by which we mean the complete transfer of counterpropagating coherent light fields into their orthogonal polarization. This highlights the necessity of time reversal odd processes (not just absorption) and coherence in perfect mode conversion and may inform device design.

4 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Unidirectional Invisibility induced by PT-Symmetric Periodic Structures
• Coherent Perfect Absorbers: Time-reversed Lasers
• PT-symmetry breaking and laser-absorber modes in optical scattering systems
• Time-reversed optical parametric oscillation

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Tunable terahertz coherent perfect absorption in a monolayer graphene
• Coherent optical control of polarization with a critical metasurface
• Broadband and energy-concentrating terahertz coherent perfect absorber based on a self-complementary metasurface
• Coherent resonant transmission
• Structure and Symmetry in Coherent Perfect Polarization Rotation