Sensing Via Exceptional Points in Space and Time Periodic Systems and in PT-Symmetric Systems

We review and explore sensor applications based on electromagnetic systems operating near an exceptional point of degeneracy (EPD). The EPD is defined as the point at which the system eigenmodes coalesce in both their eigenvalues and eigenvectors varying a system parameter. Sensors based on EPDs show sensitivity proportional to δ^1/m, where δ is a perturbation of a system parameter and m is the order of the EPD. EPDs manifest in PT-symmetric systems or periodic systems that can be periodic in either time or space. We review all the methods to obtain EPD based sensors, and we focus on two classes of ultra-sensitive EPD systems: i) periodic linear time-varying single oscillators, and ii) optical gyroscopes based on a modified coupled resonators optical waveguide (CROW) exhibiting 4th order EPD.