One of the interesting features of open quantum and wave systems is the non-Hermitian degeneracy called an exceptional point, where not only energy levels but also the corresponding eigenstates coalesce. We demonstrate that such a degeneracy can appear in optical microdisk cavities by deforming the boundary extremely weakly. This surprising finding is explained by a semiclassical theory of dynamical tunneling. It is shown that the exceptional points come in nearly degenerated pairs, originating from the different symmetry classes of modes. A spatially local chirality of modes at the exceptional point is related to vortex structures of the Poynting vector.
In optical microdisk cavities with boundary deformations the backscattering between clockwise and counter-clockwise propagating waves is in general asymmetric. The striking consequence of this asymmetry is that these apparently weakly open systems show pronounced non-Hermitian phenomena. The optical modes appear in non-orthogonal pairs, where both modes copropagate in a preferred sense of rotation, i.e. the modes exhibit a finite chirality. Full asymmetry in the backscattering results in a non-Hermitian degeneracy (exceptional point) where the deviation from closed system evolution is strongest. We study the effects of asymmetric backscattering in ray dynamics. For this purpose, we construct a finite approximation of the Frobenius-Perron operator for deformed microdisk cavities, which describes the dynamics of intensities in phase space. Eigenstates of the Frobenius-Perron operator show nice analogies to optical modes: they come in non-orthogonal copropagating pairs and have a finite chirality. We introduce a new cavity system with a smooth asymmetric boundary deformation where we demonstrate our results and we illustrate the main aspects with the help of a simple analytically solvable 1D model.
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