Extraordinary directional optical properties of a parity-time symmetric one-dimensional photonic lattice

Abstract Recently, photonic structures with non-Hermitian Hamiltonians have attracted few attentions for engineering materials with new directional functionalities. In this paper, we have investigated the transmittance and reflectance of the one-dimensional photonic lattice with parity-time symmetric quintuple unit cell. Exceptional points, unidirectional and bidirectional reflectionless are obtained by judicious choice of materials and period number. Directional phenomena are examined with respect to the incident angle of light and wavelength for both TE and TM polarizations. More complicated reflection/transmission is observed at the considerable incident angle at some multilayer structures. These findings may provide attractive applications in optical devices with extraordinary directional responses.