Optical realization of relativistic non-Hermitian quantum mechanics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how optical structures with gain and loss can simulate relativistic non-Hermitian quantum mechanics, revealing spectral properties and phenomena like PT symmetry breaking through observable optical effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optical platform to visualize and study spectral features of non-Hermitian Dirac equations, linking optical phenomena to quantum spectral properties.

Findings

Spectral singularities correspond to observable resonance effects.

PT symmetry breaking relates to laser oscillation phenomena.

Optical structures can simulate relativistic non-Hermitian quantum systems.

Abstract

Light propagation in distributed feedback optical structures with gain/loss regions is shown to provide an accessible laboratory tool to visualize in optics the spectral properties of the one-dimensional Dirac equation with non-Hermitian interactions. Spectral singularities and PT symmetry breaking of the Dirac Hamiltonian are shown to correspond to simple observable physical quantities and related to well-known physical phenomena like resonance narrowing and laser oscillation.