Parity-time-symmetric microcavity for gas concentration detection

Microdisks and micro-rings are commonly used micro-optical devices that greatly enhance the interaction between light and matter within a cavity due to their high-quality factor and small mode volume, making them widely used in microcavity optical sensing. By introducing parity-time (PT) symmetric structures into the microcavity, the coupling efficiency of the optical field inside the cavity can be improved, which is conducive to obtaining higher sensing sensitivity. We theoretically verify the feasibility of using a PT-symmetric micro-ring coupled microdisk composite cavity as an active sensor based on the characteristics of exceptional point (EP) enhanced sensing in PT-symmetric systems. Gain is introduced to the microdisk cavity by injecting current until the system undergoes PT symmetry breaking, i.e., when the sensor is at the EP, the transmission of light will exhibit a nonlinear enhancement effect due to the degeneracy of eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors of the system, making the signal more sensitive to changes in the sensing medium. The results obtained through the finite difference time domain method show that the intensity sensitivity of the PT-symmetric microcavity at the EP is improved by about 11.8 times compared with the conventional microcavity when the working wavelength is in the range of communication band and different concentrations of the same gas are injected into the air, which is expected to provide reference and insight for the further development of microcavities for refractive index sensing.