Enhanced stability, bistability, and exceptional points in saturable active photonic couplers

Abstract: A generic photonic coupler with active and lossy parts, gain saturation and asymmetric characteristics is examined. Saturable activity is shown to be able to enhance the overall stability of the steady states, prevent evolution to undesirable unbounded modes and allow for bistable operation in specific regions of parametric space. Both stability and bistability are studied in the phase space of the system, where the basins of attraction of each state are identified, providing an accurate description of the dependence of the electric fields on the initial conditions. Continuous families of exceptional points are detected via suitable regulation of the coupling and asymmetry features of the configuration. In this way, a complete description of the nonlinear dynamics landscape is provided, which should be crucial for multiple application-driven designs incorporating such a ubiquitous optical component.