Hyperuniform Disorder in Photonic Crystal Slabs with Intrinsic non-Hermiticity

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Zeyu, Sadri, Koorosh, Gould, Brian, Rechtsman, Mikael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhang, Zeyu
Sadri, Koorosh
Gould, Brian
Rechtsman, Mikael
author_facet Zhang, Zeyu
Sadri, Koorosh
Gould, Brian
Rechtsman, Mikael
contents Hyperuniform disorder is a type of correlated disorder characterized by vanishing spectral density at small wavevectors, making the configuration effectively homogeneous on long length scales. In photonics, hyperuniform disorder is promising for generating isotropic photonic pseudogaps and engineering photonic crystal waveguides. However, these studies are largely restricted to idealized lossless settings, although all photonic systems necessarily have loss. In this work, light propagation in photonic crystal slabs with imposed hyperuniform disorder is investigated theoretically and numerically. The system is intrinsically non-Hermitian due to radiative loss, with non-Hermiticity appearing as a complex effective mass of a quadratic photonic band. A theoretical framework for disorder scattering is analytically derived in Hermitian and non-Hermitian quadratic bands with real and complex effective mass, respectively. In contrast to the power law behavior $|\mathbf{k}|^α$ observed in the Hermitian case (where $α$ is the hyperuniformity exponent), the scattering loss in the non-Hermitian band is given by $C_0+C_{β_2}\cdot|\mathbf{k}|^{β_2}$, where $C_0$ is a finite constant and the exponent $β_2\leq 2$. Our theoretical predictions are verified with tight-binding and Finite-Difference Time-Domain simulations with realistic photonic crystal parameters, based on recent experiments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_04389
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hyperuniform Disorder in Photonic Crystal Slabs with Intrinsic non-Hermiticity
Zhang, Zeyu
Sadri, Koorosh
Gould, Brian
Rechtsman, Mikael
Optics
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Soft Condensed Matter
Hyperuniform disorder is a type of correlated disorder characterized by vanishing spectral density at small wavevectors, making the configuration effectively homogeneous on long length scales. In photonics, hyperuniform disorder is promising for generating isotropic photonic pseudogaps and engineering photonic crystal waveguides. However, these studies are largely restricted to idealized lossless settings, although all photonic systems necessarily have loss. In this work, light propagation in photonic crystal slabs with imposed hyperuniform disorder is investigated theoretically and numerically. The system is intrinsically non-Hermitian due to radiative loss, with non-Hermiticity appearing as a complex effective mass of a quadratic photonic band. A theoretical framework for disorder scattering is analytically derived in Hermitian and non-Hermitian quadratic bands with real and complex effective mass, respectively. In contrast to the power law behavior $|\mathbf{k}|^α$ observed in the Hermitian case (where $α$ is the hyperuniformity exponent), the scattering loss in the non-Hermitian band is given by $C_0+C_{β_2}\cdot|\mathbf{k}|^{β_2}$, where $C_0$ is a finite constant and the exponent $β_2\leq 2$. Our theoretical predictions are verified with tight-binding and Finite-Difference Time-Domain simulations with realistic photonic crystal parameters, based on recent experiments.
title Hyperuniform Disorder in Photonic Crystal Slabs with Intrinsic non-Hermiticity
topic Optics
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.04389