Title: Parity-Time Symmetry Photonics: exploiting optical losses 

Speaker: Prof. Xiang Zhang (University of California, Berkeley, USA)  

Time: June 1, 2016 15:00PM 

Venue: No.101 meeting room of the library, IOS, CAS 

Abstract: Optical loss is usually undesirable. Recently, judiciously designed balanced gain and loss structures, so called parity-time (PT) symmetric synthetic systems, are explored due to their extraordinary properties. In this talk I will discuss the notion of PT symmetry in optical systems. Especially I will discuss how to achieve nano-scale spectrometer by designing an anti-Hermitian light matter interactions. This will be also useful for spectrum splitting in solar applications. Finally, I will discuss a single mode lasing scheme using PT symmetric periodically modulation in a micro ring lasers.

Biography：Xiang Zhang is the Ernest Kuh Chaired Professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of Materials Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He is also the Director of the NSF Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (SINAM). He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Academia Sinica and foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research in optical metamaterials was selected by Times Magazine as “Top 10 Scientific Discoveries in 2008”. Xiang Zhang was a recipient of many awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Fred Kavli Distinguished Lecturerhip, Fitzroy Medal, Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award, the Max Born Award and the Julius Springer Prize. He received his BS/MS in physics in Nanjing University, China, and Ph.D from UC Berkeley in 1996 and was on faculty at Pennsylvania State University and UCLA prior returning Berkeley faculty in 2004.