Anti-PT-symmetry-enhanced interconversion between microwave and optical fields

Abstract: The intrinsic dissipation of systems into a shared reservoir introduces coherence between two systems, enabling anti-Parity-Time (anti-PT) symmetry. In this paper, we propose an anti-PT symmetric converter, consisting of a microwave cavity coupled dissipatively to a ferromagnetic sphere, which supports significant improvements in the conversion efficiency when compared to coherently coupled setups. In particular, when only the ferrite sample is driven, the strong coherence induced by the vacuum of the mediating channel leads to much stronger enhancements in the intended conversion. The enhancement is an inalienable artifact of the emergence of a long-lived, dark mode associated with a quasi-real singularity of the hybrid system. In addition, we observe considerable asymmetry in the efficiencies of microwave-to-optical and optical-to-microwave conversions, in spite of the symmetrical structure of the trilinear optomagnonic coupling stimulating both the transduction phenomena. The nonreciprocity stems from the intrinsic asymmetry in the couplings of the microwave and optical fields to the cavity-magnon network as well as the phase coupling entailed by the spatial separation.