Loss revives bistable state near the exceptional point in a non-Hermitian microwave photonic meta-molecule

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in non-Hermitian microwave photonic systems, losses can unexpectedly revive bistable states near exceptional points, enabling new control strategies for photonic devices.

Contribution

It experimentally shows loss-induced revival of bistability near exceptional points in a microwave meta-molecule, revealing a novel role of dissipation in non-Hermitian systems.

Findings

Loss can suppress and then revive bistable states.

Bistable state revival is linked to field intensity revival.

Results enable new control methods for photonic devices.

Abstract

By exploring the extraordinary property of exceptional points (EPs) in non-Hermitian systems, we here demonstrate that losses can play constructive roles in controlling bistable states. We experimentally realize the EP in a non-Hermitian meta-molecule of coupled resonators in microwave regime. By increasing the loss, we first observe the bistable state suppression at the weak-dissipative regime, but then the bistable state recovery in strong-dissipative regime. Both the experimental and theoretical analysis demonstrate that the revival of bistable states results from the revival of the field intensity after the system encounters EPs, in spite of the increasing loss. Our results provide an alternative way to controlling and manifesting bistable systems, so as to achieve flexible photonic devices, not limited to the microwave regime.