Effects of non-uniform distributions of gain and loss in photonic crystals

TL;DR

This paper develops a $oldsymbol{k} oldsymbol{ullet} oldsymbol{p}$ theory for photonic crystals with spatially separated gain and loss, revealing how supercell bands merge and how eigenvalue imaginary parts behave under gain/loss variations.

Contribution

It introduces a supercell approach to analyze non-uniform gain and loss in photonic crystals, showing band merging behavior and properties of the modal coupling matrix.

Findings

Supercell bands merge outward from degenerate contours.

Accidental degeneracies do not lead to band merging.

The modal coupling matrix is trace-less, affecting eigenvalue movement.

Abstract

We present a $\mathbf{k} \cdot \mathbf{p}$ theory of photonic crystals containing gain and loss in which the gain and loss are added to separate primitive cells of the underlying Hermitian system, thereby creating a supercell photonic crystal. We show that the supercell bands of this system can merge outward from the degenerate contour formed from folding the bands of the underlying Hermitian system into the supercell Brillouin zone, but that other accidental degeneracies in the band structure of the underlying Hermitian system do not yield band merging behavior. Finally, we show that the modal coupling matrix in PhCs with balanced gain and loss is trace-less, and thus the imaginary components of the eigenvalues can only move relative to one another as the strength of the gain and loss is varied, without any collective motion.