Coherent perfect absorbers for transient, periodic or chaotic optical fields: time-reversed lasers beyond threshold

Abstract

Recent works [Y.D. Chong {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 105}, 053901 (2010); W. Wan {\it et al.}, Science {\bf 331}, 889 (2011)] have shown that the time-reversed process of lasing at threshold realizes a coherent perfect absorber (CPA). In a CPA, a lossy medium in an optical cavity with a specific degree of dissipation, equal in modulus to the gain of the lasing medium, can perfectly absorb coherent optical waves at discrete frequencies that are the time-reversed counterpart of the lasing modes. Here the concepts of time-reversal of lasing and CPA are extended for optical radiation emitted by a laser operated in an arbitrary (and generally highly-nonlinear) regime, i.e. for transient, chaotic or periodic coherent optical fields. We prove that any electromagnetic signal $E(t)$ generated by a laser system \textbf{S} operated in an arbitrary regime can be perfectly absorbed by a CPA device ${\mathbf{S}}^{\prime }$ which is simply realized by placing inside \textbf{S} a broadband linear absorber (attenuator) of appropriate transmittance. As examples, we discuss CPA devices that perfectly absorb a chaotic laser signal and a frequency-modulated optical wave.

9 pages, 3 figure; to appear in Phys. Rev. A

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• Dynamical control of matter-wave tunneling in periodic potentials
• Repulsively bound atom pairs in an optical lattice
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• Single Particle Tunneling in Strongly Driven Double Well Potentials
• Observation of photon-assisted tunneling in optical lattices
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• Second order tunneling of two interacting bosons in a driven triple well
• Controlling directed atomic motion and second-order tunneling of a spin-orbit-coupled atom in optical lattices
• Dynamics of spin-orbit-coupled cold atomic gases in a Floquet lattice with an impurity
• Low-energy doublons in the ac-driven two-species Hubbard model
• Klein tunneling of two correlated bosons
• Coherent control via interplay between driving field and two-body interaction in a double well
• Quench field sensitivity of two-particle correlation in a Hubbard model