Impact of loss on the wave dynamics in photonic waveguide lattices

Abstract

We analyze the impact of loss in lattices of coupled optical waveguides and find that in such case, the hopping between adjacent waveguides is necessarily complex. This results not only in a transition of the light spreading from ballistic to diffusive, but also in a new kind of diffraction that is caused by loss dispersion. We prove our theoretical results with experimental observations.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in PRL, 5+8 pages (Paper + Supplemental material), 4 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Introduction to PT-Symmetric Quantum Theory
• PT symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking in a microwave billiard
• PT-symmetry in honeycomb photonic lattices
• Conceptual Aspects of PT-Symmetry and Pseudo-Hermiticity: A status report
• Spatiotemporal vortex solitons in hexagonal arrays of waveguides
• Pseudo-Hermiticity and Electromagnetic Wave Propagation: The case of anisotropic and lossy media

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Nonlinear switching and solitons in PT-symmetric photonic systems
• Chiral Flat Bands: Existence, Engineering and Stability
• Landau-Zener Bloch oscillations with perturbed flat bands
• Direct Observation of Topology from Single-photon Dynamics on a Photonic Chip
• Probing bulk topological invariants using leaky photonic lattices
• Bulk and edge-state arcs in non-hermitian coupled-resonator arrays
• Ballistic, diffusive, and arrested transport in disordered momentum-space lattices
• Compatibility of transport effects in non-Hermitian nonreciprocal systems
• General coupled mode theory in non-Hermitian waveguides
• Diffraction control in PT-symmetric photonic lattices: from beam rectification to dynamic localization
• Imaginary couplings in non-Hermitian coupled-mode theory: Effects on exceptional points of optical resonators
• Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Micro-Ring Optical Cavity By Engineered Dissipation
• Nonlocal discrete continuity and invariant currents in locally symmetric effective Schrödinger arrays
• Stable Bloch oscillations and Landau-Zener tunneling in a non-Hermitian $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric flat band lattice
• Instantaneous modulations in time-varying complex optical potentials
• Time evolution of localized states in Lieb lattices
• Discrete solitons in zigzag waveguide arrays with different types of linear mixing between nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor couplings
• Anomalous transport in periodic photonic chains with designed loss
• Beam splitter and combiner based on Bloch oscillations in spatially modulated waveguide arrays
• Can a photonic thermalization gap arise in disordered non-Hermitian Hamiltonian systems?
• Signature of phase singularities in diffusive regime in one dimensional disordered lattices: Interplay and qualitative analysis
• Landau-Zener transitions through a pair of higher order exceptional points