Tailoring Defects in Photonic Time Crystals for Coherent Energy Control
Abstract
Recent advances in time-varying photonics have revealed new degrees of freedom for manipulating optical states, arising from the distinctive nature of the temporal axis: causality and open-system dynamics. A representative example is photonic time crystals (PTCs) characterized by discrete time-translational symmetry, which exhibit space-analogous yet distinct phenomena, such as momentum gaps and amplifying-decaying Floquet-mode pairs. Although PTCs enable optical-energy amplification beyond conventional gain media, their application as programmable energy-functional devices remains challenging. Here, we propose a design framework for tailoring optical energy via defective PTCs. By optimizing defect permittivity and duration using analytic gradients of time transfer matrices, we realize prescribed coherent energy amplification and suppression. We show that a single defect enables continuous energy tailoring, while revealing an intrinsic asymmetry between amplification and suppression due to the inherently amplifying nature of the momentum gap. Extending the framework to coupled defects expands the design space and markedly improves suppression, establishing temporal-defect engineering as a route to programmable coherent energy control.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{lee2026tailoring,
title = {{Tailoring Defects in Photonic Time Crystals for Coherent Energy Control}},
author = {Dayeong Lee and Jongheon Yeo and Gitae Lee and Jungmin Kim and Namkyoo Park and Sunkyu Yu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = may,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.30633},
eprint = {2605.30633},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30633},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Tailoring Defects in Photonic Time Crystals for Coherent Energy Control
AU - Dayeong Lee
AU - Jongheon Yeo
AU - Gitae Lee
AU - Jungmin Kim
AU - Namkyoo Park
AU - Sunkyu Yu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/05/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.30633
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30633
AB - Recent advances in time-varying photonics have revealed new degrees of freedom for manipulating optical states, arising from the distinctive nature of the temporal axis: causality and open-system dynamics. A representative example is photonic time crystals (PTCs) characterized by discrete time-translational symmetry, which exhibit space-analogous yet distinct phenomena, such as momentum gaps and amplifying-decaying Floquet-mode pairs. Although PTCs enable optical-energy amplification beyond conventional gain media, their application as programmable energy-functional devices remains challenging. Here, we propose a design framework for tailoring optical energy via defective PTCs. By optimizing defect permittivity and duration using analytic gradients of time transfer matrices, we realize prescribed coherent energy amplification and suppression. We show that a single defect enables continuous energy tailoring, while revealing an intrinsic asymmetry between amplification and suppression due to the inherently amplifying nature of the momentum gap. Extending the framework to coupled defects expands the design space and markedly improves suppression, establishing temporal-defect engineering as a route to programmable coherent energy control.
ER -