Observation of Bloch oscillations in complex PT-symmetric photonic lattices.

ABSTRACT: Light propagation in periodic environments is often associated with a number of interesting and potentially useful processes. If a crystalline optical potential is also linearly ramped, light can undergo periodic Bloch oscillations, a direct outcome of localized Wannier-Stark states and their equidistant eigenvalue spectrum. Even though these effects have been extensively explored in conservative settings, this is by no means the case in non-Hermitian photonic lattices encompassing both amplification and attenuation. Quite recently, Bloch oscillations have been predicted in parity-time-symmetric structures involving gain and loss in a balanced fashion. While in a complex bulk medium, one intuitively expects that light will typically follow the path of highest amplification, in a periodic s

SUBMITTER: Wimmer M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4671013 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature