Loss-driven gain enhancements driven by topological singularities in non-Hermitian photonic crystals defects

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that lossy defects in non-Hermitian photonic crystals can induce topological singularities, leading to significant gain enhancements and high-quality resonances, revealing loss's counterintuitive role in system engineering.

Contribution

It uncovers how loss-induced topological singularities in non-Hermitian photonic crystals can dramatically enhance system gain and resonance quality, a novel insight into loss and topology interplay.

Findings

Lossy defects induce transmission singularities not seen in lossless systems.

Resonances at topological branch cut singularities exhibit high quality factors (>10^4).

Loss can be used to engineer gain response via topological phenomena.

Abstract

We show that purely lossy defects in one- and two-dimensional non-Hermitian photonic crystals can induce transmission matrix singularities not accessible with lossless defects. These singularities in turn can enable dramatic enhancement in overall system gain not accessible through conventional means. We further show that the underlying mechanism behind the loss-induced gain enhancement is due to the resonances being located specifically at topological branch cut singularities in the reflection coefficient with nontrivial winding numbers. The resulting resonances can exhibit exceptionally high quality factors in excess of $\sim 10^4$. Our work highlights the counterintuitive role of loss in engineering singularities in the gain response in non-Hermitian systems and its connection to topological phenomena in photonic systems.