Cascaded PT-Symmetric Artificial Sheets: Multimodal Manipulation of Self-Dual Emitter-Absorber Singularities, and Unidirectional and Bidirectional Reflectionless Transparencies

We herein introduce cascaded parity-time (PT)-symmetric artificial sheets (e.g., metasurfaces or frequency selective surfaces) that may exhibit multiple higher-order laser-absorber modes and bidirectional reflectionless transmission resonances within the PT-broken phase, as well as a unidirectional reflectionless transmission resonance associated with the exceptional point (EP). We derive the explicit expressions of the gain-loss parameter required for obtaining these modes and their intriguing physical properties. By exploiting the cascaded PT structures, the gain-loss threshold for the self-dual laser-absorber operation can be remarkably lowered, while the EP remains unaltered. We further study interferometric sensing based on such a multimodal laser-absorber and demonstrate that its sensitivity could be unprecedentedly high and proportional to the number of metasurfaces along the light propagation direction.