Design and optimization of a passive PT-symmetric grating with asymmetric reflection and diffraction

In recent years, notions drawn from non-Hermitian physics and parity-time (PT) symmetry have raised considerable attention in photonics, enabling various novel structures with entirely new and unexpected features. Here we propose, design, and optimize a compact passive PT-symmetric grating to achieve asymmetric reflection and diffraction based on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform. The structure is composed of two sets of interleaved tailored gratings, which are all well-defined on the top of a silicon waveguide. Without additional loss or gain materials, the effective index and the scattering loss of the waveguide mode are modulated by the structure design. To our knowledge, it is the first time that the scattering loss arising from grating elements is regarded as an efficient way to realize PT-symmetric structure. The complicated multi-parameter optimization process of the proposed PT-symmetric grating is completed by using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. In the simulation, asymmetric reflection with high contrast ratio is realized. We also find that the waveguide-to-free-space diffraction from one side of the structure is significantly suppressed, leading to asymmetric diffraction. Moreover, we investigate the fabrication tolerance of the proposed PT-symmetric grating. Our work provides a new perspective for exploring and creating complicated on-chip PT-symmetric devices.