Exceptional Points in Photonics: From Non-Hermitian Physics to Applications
Abstract
Open photonic systems provide a versatile platform for non-Hermitian physics, enabling control over complex spectra, transport, and light-matter interactions. Exceptional points (EPs), at which eigenvalues and eigenvectors coalesce and the governing operator becomes defective, play a central role because they combine branch-point spectral topology, nonanalytic perturbative response, and controllable eigenstate conversion. This Review provides a unified framework for EP photonics by systematically distinguishing exceptional degeneracies according to the underlying operator, spectral variable, boundary conditions, and experimentally accessible observables. We discuss Hamiltonian EPs, absorbing EPs associated with scattering zeros, real-frequency scattering-matrix and Jones-matrix EPs, Bloch and Floquet EPs, and Liouvillian EPs in open quantum systems. We review their spectral topology, static and dynamical encircling, higher-order exceptional structures, and coexistence with bound states in the continuum, together with applications in sensing, lasing, coherent absorption, directional scattering, polarization and wavefront control, nonlinear optics, optical storage, nonreciprocal photonics, and quantum photonics. We also critically assess the current limitations, practical challenges, and future perspectives of EP-based photonic technologies, with particular attention to robustness, noise, scalability, and experimentally measurable performance.
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BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026exceptional,
title = {{Exceptional Points in Photonics: From Non-Hermitian Physics to Applications}},
author = {Fan Zhang and Nikolay Solodovchenko and Dmitrii N. Maksimov and Xuchen Wang and Mingzhao Song and Filippo Capolino and C. T. Chan and Andrey Bogdanov},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.01239},
eprint = {2609.01239},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01239},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Exceptional Points in Photonics: From Non-Hermitian Physics to Applications
AU - Fan Zhang
AU - Nikolay Solodovchenko
AU - Dmitrii N. Maksimov
AU - Xuchen Wang
AU - Mingzhao Song
AU - Filippo Capolino
AU - C. T. Chan
AU - Andrey Bogdanov
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.01239
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01239
AB - Open photonic systems provide a versatile platform for non-Hermitian physics, enabling control over complex spectra, transport, and light-matter interactions. Exceptional points (EPs), at which eigenvalues and eigenvectors coalesce and the governing operator becomes defective, play a central role because they combine branch-point spectral topology, nonanalytic perturbative response, and controllable eigenstate conversion. This Review provides a unified framework for EP photonics by systematically distinguishing exceptional degeneracies according to the underlying operator, spectral variable, boundary conditions, and experimentally accessible observables. We discuss Hamiltonian EPs, absorbing EPs associated with scattering zeros, real-frequency scattering-matrix and Jones-matrix EPs, Bloch and Floquet EPs, and Liouvillian EPs in open quantum systems. We review their spectral topology, static and dynamical encircling, higher-order exceptional structures, and coexistence with bound states in the continuum, together with applications in sensing, lasing, coherent absorption, directional scattering, polarization and wavefront control, nonlinear optics, optical storage, nonreciprocal photonics, and quantum photonics. We also critically assess the current limitations, practical challenges, and future perspectives of EP-based photonic technologies, with particular attention to robustness, noise, scalability, and experimentally measurable performance.
ER -