Spectral singularities in the TE and TM modes of a PT-symmetric slab system: Optimal conditions for realizing a CPA-laser

Among the interesting outcomes of the study of the physical applications of spectral singularities in PT-symmetric optical systems is the discovery of CPA-lasers. These are devices that act both as a threshold laser and a coherent perfect absorber (CPA) for the same values of their physical parameters. Unlike a homogeneous slab that is made to act as a CPA, a slab CPA-laser would absorb the incident waves coming from the left and right of the device provided that they have appropriate intensity and phase contrasts. We provide a comprehensive study of one of the simplest experimentally accessible examples of a CPA-laser, namely a PT-symmetric optical slab system consisting of a balanced pair of adjacent or separated gain and loss components. In particular, we give a closed form expression describing the spectral singularities of the system which correspond to its CPA-laser configurations. We determine the intensity and phase contrasts for the TE and TM waves that are emitted (absorbed) whenever the slab acts as a laser (CPA). We also investigate the behavior of the time-averaged energy density and Poynting vector for these waves. This is necessary for determining the optimal values of the physical parameters of the system that make it act as a CPA-laser. These turn out to correspond to situations where the separation distance s between the gain and loss layers is an odd multiple of a characteristic length scale s0. A curious by-product of our study is that, except for the cases where s is an even integer multiple of s0, there is a critical angle of polarization beyond which the energy of the waves emitted from the lossy layer can be larger than the energy of those emitted from the gain layer.