All-dielectric apodized photonic crystals: A nondissipative pseudo-Hermitian system hosting multiple exceptional points

Optical systems obeying non-Hermitian dynamics have been the subject of intense and concerted investigation over the past two decades owing to their broad implications in photonics, acoustics, electronics, and atomic physics. A vast majority of such investigations rely on a dissipative, balanced loss-gain system which introduces unavoidable noise, and consequently this limits the coherent control of propagation dynamics. Here, we show that an all-dielectric, nondissipative photonic crystal (PC) could host at least two exceptional points in its eigenvalue spectrum. By introducing optimum apodization in the PC architecture, namely 1D-APC, we show that such a configuration supports a spectrum of exceptional points which distinctly demarcates the PT-symmetric region from the region where PT symmetry is broken. The analytical framework allows us to estimate the geometric phase of the reflected beam and derive the constraint that governs the excitation of topologically protected optical Tamm-plasmon modes in 1D APCs.