Organic Synthetic Photonic Systems with Reconfigurable Parity-Time Symmetry Breaking for Tunable Single-Mode...

Area of Science:

• Photonics
• Materials Science
• Quantum Physics

Background:

• Non-Hermitian photonics, based on parity-time (PT) symmetry, is revolutionizing photonic sciences.
• PT-symmetric systems, crucial for microlaser advancement, typically manipulate only imaginary refractive indices, limiting spectral bandwidth.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and demonstrate a novel organic composite material system for reconfigurable PT-symmetric microcavities.
• To achieve tunable single-mode laser outputs by controlling complex refractive indices.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing a grayscale electron-beam direct-writing technique to create microdisk cavities with periodic gain and loss distribution in dye-doped polymer films.
• Incorporating organic photoisomerizable compounds to dynamically tune the real refractive index of the microresonators.

Main Results:

• Achieved thresholdless PT-symmetry breaking and single-mode laser operation.
• Demonstrated real-time reconfiguration of PT-symmetric systems for dynamically tunable single-mode laser output.
• Enabled continuous tuning of laser output by tailoring the real refractive index.

Conclusions:

• This work fundamentally enhances PT-symmetric photonic systems for innovative synthetic photonic material and architecture design.
• The developed method offers a versatile platform for advanced microlaser technology with tunable spectral properties.