Local Parity-Time Symmetry Functional Devices for Integrated Optics

Natalia Dubrovina (1) , Vincent Brac de La Perriere (1) , H. Benisty (2) , Abderrahim Ramdane (3) , Anatole Lupu (1)

1 IEF - Institut d'électronique fondamentale
2 Laboratoire Charles Fabry / Naphel
3 LPN - Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures

We address the potential of a system with gain and loss featuring a PT-symmetric configuration for the realization of tunable, reconfigurable and non-reciprocal devices. By using PT-symmetric coupled waveguides and Bragg reflectors as fundamental building blocks, it is possible to build a wide variety of functional optical devices such as switches, unidirectional Bragg gratings, reconfigurable modal demultiplexers etc. The use of nonuniform coupling or gain-loss modulation profiles further brings a number of advantages as compared to the uniform PT-symmetric structures. The disruptive paradigm of the PT-symmetry could thus provide a major boost to integrated optics and is expected to foster a new generation of tunable, reconfigurable and non-reciprocal devices.

Keywords: parity-time symmetry; optical switching; buffer memory; gain-loss modulation; Bragg grating; integrated optoelectronics

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Natalia Dubrovina, Vincent Brac de La Perriere, H. Benisty, Abderrahim Ramdane, Anatole Lupu. Local Parity-Time Symmetry Functional Devices for Integrated Optics. 18TH International conference on transparent optical networks (ICTON), Jul 2016, Trento, Italy. ⟨10.1109/ICTON.2016.7550554⟩. ⟨hal-01714341⟩