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Unidirectional light propagation at exceptional points

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A Correction to this article was published on 22 May 2013

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Unique opportunities arise from exceptional points that coalesce states of an open system in synthetic photonic media, where delicately balanced complex dielectric functions produce unprecedented optical properties.

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Figure 1: A photonic crystal consists of periodically arranged non-absorbing dielectrics with sizes at the scale of the light wavelength.
Figure 2: Unidirectional propagation of light at exceptional points.
Figure 3: The two solutions of a two-channel waveguide with a complex and interacting Hamiltonian coalesce at the exceptional points (orange spheres).

Change history

  • 29 April 2013

    In the version of this Commentary originally published, the volume number in ref. 6 was incorrect; the reference should have read 'Feng, L. et al. Nature Mater. 12, 108–113 (2013)'. This error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 through the Materials Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and in the Materials Sciences Division, Xiaobo Yin and Xiang Zhang are in the NSF Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 3112 Etcheverry Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California 94720, USA,

    Xiaobo Yin & Xiang Zhang

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  1. Xiaobo Yin
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  2. Xiang Zhang
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Correspondence to Xiang Zhang.

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Yin, X., Zhang, X. Unidirectional light propagation at exceptional points. Nature Mater 12, 175–177 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3576

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