Exceptional rings in nonlinear non-Hermitian planar optical microcavities: implementation, signal enhancement, and topology

TL;DR

This paper explores the existence and properties of exceptional rings in nonlinear non-Hermitian optical microcavities, revealing how nonlinearity transforms these rings and enhances perturbation responses, with implications for topological photonics.

Contribution

It demonstrates the formation of exceptional rings in nonlinear optical resonators and analyzes their topological and spectral properties, extending non-Hermitian topology to nonlinear regimes.

Findings

Nonlinear Kerr effects split exceptional rings into two concentric rings.

The larger ring becomes a third-order exceptional point.

Nonlinear regime enhances and makes perturbation responses adjustable.

Abstract

Non-Hermitian systems hosting exceptional points (EPs) exhibit signal enhancement and unconventional mode dynamics. Going beyond isolated EPs, here we report on the existence of exceptional rings (ERs) in planar optical resonators with specific form of circular dichroism and TE-TM splitting. Such exceptional rings possess intriguing topologies as discussed earlier for condensed matter systems, but they remain virtually unexplored in presence of nonlinearity, for which our photonic platform is ideal. We find that when Kerr-type nonlinearity (or saturable gain) is introduced, the linear ER splits into two concentric ERs, with the larger-radius ring being a ring of third-order EPs. Transitioning from linear to nonlinear regime, we present a rigorous analysis of (spectral and band) topologies and report enhanced and adjustable perturbation response in the nonlinear regime. Whereas certain features are specific to our system, the results on non-Hermitian topologies and nonlinearity-enhanced perturbation response are generic and equally relevant to a broad class of other nonlinear non-Hermitian systems, providing a universal framework for engineering ERs and EPs in nonlinear non-Hermitian systems.