Topological funneling of light

Dissipation is a general feature of non-Hermitian systems. But rather than being an unavoidable nuisance, non-Hermiticity can be precisely controlled and hence used for sophisticated applications, such as optical sensors with enhanced sensitivity. In our work, we implement a non-Hermitian photonic mesh lattice by tailoring the anisotropy of the nearest-neighbor coupling. The appearance of an interface results in a complete collapse of the entire eigenmode spectrum, leading to an exponential localization of all modes at the interface. As a consequence, any light field within the lattice travels toward this interface, irrespective of its shape and input position. On the basis of this topological phenomenon,…

• DF
  Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

  Awards: SZ276/19-1, SZ276/9-2, 258499086 - SFB 1170, 39085490 - EXC 2147, BL574/13-1, SZ276/20-1
• AK
  Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung