Quasinormal Mode Theory of Chiral Power Flow from Linearly Polarized Dipole Emitters Coupled to Index-Modulated Microring Resonators Close to an Exceptional Point

Abstract

Chiral emission can be achieved from a circularly polarized dipole emitter in a nanophotonic structure that possess special polarization properties such as a polarization singularity, namely with right or left circularly polarization (C-points). Recently, Chen et al. [Nature Physics 16, 571 (2020)] demonstrated the surprising result of chiral radiation from a linearly-polarized (LP) dipole emitter, and argued that this effect is caused by a decoupling with the underlying eigenmodes of a non-Hermitian system, working at an exceptional point (EP). Here we present a quasinormal mode (QNM) approach to model a similar index-modulated ring resonator working near an EP and show the same unusual chiral power flow properties from LP emitters, in direct agreement with the experimental results. We explain these results quantitatively without invoking the interpretation of a missing dimension (the Jordan vector) and a decoupling from the cavity eigenmodes, since the correct eigenmodes are the QNMs which explain the chiral emission using only two cavity modes. By coupling a LP emitter with the dominant two QNMs of the ring resonator, we show how the chiral emission depend on the position and orientation of the emitter, which is also verified by the excellent agreement with respect to the power flow between the QNM theory and full numerical dipole solutions. We also show how a normal mode solution will fail to capture the correct chirality since it does not take into account the essential QNM phase. Moreover, we demonstrate how one can achieve frequency-dependent chiral emission, and replace lossy materials with gain materials in the index modulation to reverse the chirality.