Parity anomaly and Landau-level lasing in strained photonic honeycomb lattices

Abstract

We describe the formation of highly degenerate, Landau-level-like amplified states in a strained photonic honeycomb lattice in which amplification breaks the sublattice symmetry. As a consequence of the parity anomaly, the zeroth Landau level is localized on a single sublattice and possesses an enhanced or reduced amplification rate. The spectral properties of the higher Landau levels are constrained by a generalized time-reversal symmetry. In the setting of two-dimensional photonic crystal lasers, the anomaly directly affects the mode selection and lasing threshold while in three-dimensional photonic lattices it can be probed via beam dynamics.

5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to journal in May 2012. v2: final version, including supplemental material (5+2 pages, 2+3 figures)

References in corpus (3)

• Analogs of quantum Hall effect edge states in photonic crystals
• PT-symmetry breaking and laser-absorber modes in optical scattering systems
• PT-Symmetric Talbot Effects

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Topological Photonics
• Selective enhancement of topologically induced interface states in a dielectric resonator chain
• From scattering theory to complex wave dynamics in non-hermitian PT-symmetric resonators
• Probing non-Hermitian phase transitions in curved space via quench dynamics
• Degeneracy doubling and sublattice polarization in strain-induced pseudo-Landau levels
• Strain-induced modifications of transport in gated graphene nanoribbons
• Test of the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem for Fullerene with a Superconducting Microwave Resonator
• Relativistic Zitterbewegung in non-Hermitian photonic waveguide systems