Non-Hermitian engineering of synthetic saturable absorbers for applications in photonics

Published

January 20, 2017

Author(s)

A. Rahman, M H. Teimourpour, Kartik Srinivasan, Ramy El-Ganainy

Abstract

We introduce a new type of synthetic saturable absorber based on quantum-inspired photonic arrays whose linear light transport characteristics can be derived via bosonic algebra. We demonstrate that under the nonlinear optical Kerr effect, these configurations function as nonlinear optical filters with two distinct regimes of small and large optical transmissions. More interestingly, we show that the boundary between these two regimes can be very sharp. The threshold optical intensity that marks this abrupt "phase transition" and its steepness can be engineered by varying the number of the guiding elements. The practical feasibility of these structures as well as their potential applications in laser systems and optical signal processing are also discussed.

Citation

Physical Review Applied

Volume

7

Issue

1

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.7.014015

Local Download

Citation

Rahman, A. , Teimourpour, M. , Srinivasan, K. and El-Ganainy, R. (2017), Non-Hermitian engineering of synthetic saturable absorbers for applications in photonics, Physical Review Applied, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.7.014015, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=921368 (Accessed October 16, 2025)