Non-Hermitian Fabry-Pérot resonances in a PT-symmetric system

In non-Hermitian scattering problems, the behavior of the transmission probability is very different from its Hermitian counterpart; it can exceed unity or even be divergent, since the non-Hermiticity can add or remove the probability to and from the scattering system. In the present paper, we consi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ken Shobe, Keiichi Kuramoto, Ken-Ichiro Imura, Naomichi Hatano
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2021-03-01
Series:Physical Review Research
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.013223
Description
Summary:In non-Hermitian scattering problems, the behavior of the transmission probability is very different from its Hermitian counterpart; it can exceed unity or even be divergent, since the non-Hermiticity can add or remove the probability to and from the scattering system. In the present paper, we consider the scattering problem of a PT-symmetric potential, and we find a counterintuitive behavior. In the usual PT-symmetric non-Hermitian system, we would typically find stationary semi-Hermitian dynamics in a regime of weak non-Hermiticity but observe instability once the non-Hermiticity goes beyond an exceptional point. Here, in contrast, the behavior of the transmission probability is strongly non-Hermitian in the regime of weak non-Hermiticity with divergent peaks, while it is superficially Hermitian in the regime of strong non-Hermiticity, recovering the conventional Fabry-Pérot-type peak structure. We show that the unitarity of the S-matrix is generally broken in both of the regimes, but is recovered in the limit of infinitely strong non-Hermiticity.
ISSN:2643-1564