RUI: Robust Exceptional Points and their Application in Harmonic Generation

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Every year many electronics and optical devices are sent back to the factories for possible repair or replacement due to the malfunctioning behavior originating from unavoidable fabrication errors or possible damages that occurred later. This would create additional costs, a large waste of materials and energy, and thus it would be extremely important to find a solution to this problem. This project will provide new scientific insight and a novel approach for designing optical devices that are immune to the possible fabrication errors or small damages in the devices that can occur under severe conditions. The main focus of this project will be on developing new designs for robust higher frequency generation which has applications in lasers. Students from a minority-serving institution will be involved directly in this project. They will learn about the mathematical modeling of optical structures and designing different geometries for photonics applications. Therefore they become prepared to enter the future workforce in industrial or academic communities in these or related fields.Exceptional points are a class of spectral singularities with a known application in sensing. However, their sensitivity to parameter space makes them difficult to fabricate. The focus of this project is on developing a new class of exceptional points in non-Hermitian photonic systems that have topological robustness. The group will design and implement robust exceptional points in two distinct systems: i) stationary optical systems and ii) spatiotemporally modulated lattices. In stationary optical systems, they will design one-dimensional optical lattices with robust exceptional points with application in robust sensing while in spatiotemporally modulated lattices they propose a new application of exceptional points in robust optical devices capable of generating higher harmonics in the presence of disorder. The ultimate goal of this project will be the understanding of the fundamental physics behind non-reciprocity, non-Hermiticity, and topology in one framework.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.