Lopsided optical diffraction in loop electromagnetically induced grating

Abstract: We propose a theoretical scheme in a cold Rubidium-87 ($^{87}$Rb) atomic ensemble with a non-Hermitian optical structure, in which a lopsided optical diffraction grating can be realized just with the combination of single spatially periodic modulation and loop-phase.~Parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric and parity-time antisymmetric ($\mathcal{APT}$) modulation can be switched by adjusting different relative phases of the applied beams. Both $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry and $\mathcal{PT}$ antisymmetry in our system are robust to the amplitudes of coupling fields, which allows optical response to be modulated precisely without symmetry breaking. Our scheme shows some nontrivial optical properties, such as lopsided diffraction, single-order diffraction, asymmetric Dammam-like diffraction, etc. Our work will benefit the development of versatile non-Hermitian/asymmetric optical devices.