Chiral States in Coupled-Lasers Lattice by On-Site Complex Potential

Sagie Gadasi, Geva Arwas, Igor Gershenzon, Asher Friesem, Nir Davidson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

The ability to control the chirality of physical devices is of great scientific and technological importance, from investigations of topologically protected edge states in condensed matter systems to wavefront engineering, isolation, and unidirectional communication. When dealing with large networks of oscillators, the control over the chirality of the bulk states becomes significantly more complicated and requires complex apparatus for generating asymmetric coupling or artificial gauge fields. Here we present a new approach for a precise control over the chirality of the bulk state of a triangular array of hundreds of symmetrically coupled lasers, by introducing a weak non-Hermitian complex potential, requiring only local on-site control of loss and frequency. In the unperturbed network, lasing supermodes with opposite chirality (staggered vortex and staggered antivortex) are equally probable. We show that by tuning the complex potential to an exceptional point, a nearly pure chiral lasing supermode is achieved. While our approach is applicable to any oscillators network, we demonstrate how the inherent nonlinearity of the lasers effectively pulls the network to the exceptional point, making the chirality extremely resilient against noise and imperfections.

Original languageEnglish
Article number163901
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume128
Issue number16
DOIs
StatePublished - 22 Apr 2022
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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