2014/10/17 by Konstantinos G. Makris, Makris, Konstantinos G., Li Ge +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1410.4626
11 pages, 11 figures
arxiv created 2014/10/17 · arxiv updated 2014/10/20
Dissipation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in dynamical systems encountered in nature because no finite system is fully isolated from its environment. In optical systems, a key challenge facing any technological application has traditionally been the mitigation of optical losses. Recent work has shown that a new class of optical materials that consist of a precisely balanced distribution of loss and gain can be exploited to engineer novel functionalities for propagating and filtering electromagnetic radiation. Here we show a generic property of optical systems that feature an unbalanced distribution of loss and gain, described by non-normal operators, namely that an overall lossy optical system can transiently amplify certain input signals by several orders of magnitude. We present a mathematical framework to analyze the dynamics of wave propagation in media with an arbitrary distribution of loss and gain and construct the initial conditions to engineer such non-normal power amplifiers. Our results point to a new design space for engineered optical systems employed in photonics and quantum optics.