Low-dimensional optical chirality in complex potentials

Abstract

Chirality is a universal feature in nature, as observed in fermion interactions and DNA helicity. Much attention has been given to chiral interactions of light, not only regarding its physical interpretation but also focusing on intriguing phenomena in excitation, absorption, refraction, and topological phase. Although recent progress in metamaterials has spurred artificial engineering of chirality, most approaches are founded on the same principle of the mixing of electric and magnetic responses. Here we propose nonmagnetic chiral interactions of light based on low-dimensional eigensystems. Exploiting the mixing of amplifying and decaying electric modes in a complex material, the low-dimensionality in polarization space having a chiral eigenstate is realized, in contrast to 2-dimensional eigensystems in previous approaches. The existence of optical spin black hole from low-dimensional chirality is predicted, and singular interactions between chiral waves are confirmed experimentally in parity-time-symmetric metamaterials.

References in corpus (6)

• Nonreciprocal light transmission in parity-time-symmetric whispering-gallery microcavities
• Loss-induced suppression and revival of lasing
• Three-dimensional metamaterials with an ultra-high effective refractive index over broad bandwidth
• Jarzynski equality in $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric quantum mechanics
• Bloch-like waves in random-walk potentials based on supersymmetry
• One-Way Optical Transition based on Causality in Momentum Space

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Transverse spinning of light with globally unique handedness
• Metadisorder for designer light in random-walk systems
• Unidirectional zero reflection as gauged parity-time symmetry
• Dynamical phase diagram of parity-time symmetry with competing saturable channels
• Acceleration toward polarization singularity inspired by relativistic ExB drift
• Topological protection in nonlinear optical dynamics with parity-time symmetry