Geodesic photon coupling and non-Hermitian exceptional point of microcavities on topologically curved space

Abstract: Asymmetric microcavities supporting Whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) are of great significance for on-chip optical information processing. We define asymmetric microcavities on topologically curved surfaces, where the geodesic light trajectories completely reconstruct the cavity mode features. The quality factors of the lossy chaotic and island modes in flat cavities can be increased by up to ~200 times by the space curvature. Strong and weak coupling between modes of very different origins occur when the space curvature brings them into resonance, leading to a fine tailoring of the cavity photon energy and lifetime. Finally, we prove that by varying the overall loss, an exceptional point can be clearly observed at which both the cavity photon energy and lifetime become degenerate. Our work is at the crosspoint of optical chaotic dynamics, non-Hermitian physics and geodesic optical devices, and would open the novel area of geodesic microcavity photonics.