Nanoparticle-mediated chiral light chaos based on non-Hermitian mode coupling

Nanoscale. 2020 Jan 23;12(3):2118-2125. doi: 10.1039/c9nr08066j.

Abstract

Non-Hermitian physics basically due to the interplay between gain and loss has attracted considerable attention in the context of understanding various brand-new and counterintuitive physical phenomena. The major emphasis of this work is concerned with the chirality properties of chaotic motion in a whispering-gallery-mode microresonator based on nanoparticle-induced non-Hermitian mode coupling, which will be a challenging endeavor that is rarely presented in previous literature. By operating the nanoparticles in a whispering-gallery-mode microresonator, we achieved a dynamic control of chaotic behavior, and a rather more exotic finding is that the chaotic motion features chiral characteristics. Our results provide insight into nonlinear nano-optomechanics and fundamentally broaden the regime of chaotic dynamics. In addition, the proposal of chiral light chaos may offer attractive new prospects for the development of on-chip manipulation of chaotic light propagation and chiral photonic crystals, and could affect nanoscientific fields beyond optics.