Investigations on asymmetric transmittivity of optical devices and different diode-like behaviors

This study theoretically proved that although reciprocal optical devices can show asymmetric transmittivity (AT) under controlled incident modes (i.e., conditional AT), they cannot guarantee AT with arbitrary incident light modes, whereas only nonreciprocal optical devices can possibly guarantee AT. Besides, the thermodynamics of both reciprocal and nonreciprocal optical devices were discussed to show that the second law of thermodynamics is valid anyway. Furthermore, the diode-like behaviors of optical and electronic devices were compared. Electrons are identical to electronic devices, so electronic devices could have asymmetric conductance regardless of electrons. In contrast, electromagnetic waves are different from optical devices as transmittivity of different modes can be different, so reciprocal optical devices showing conditional AT cannot guarantee AT when incident modes are arbitrary. The mathematical proof and characteristic comparisons between electronic and optical diodes, which are firstly presented here, should help clarifying the necessary nonreciprocity required for being optical diodes. © 2023 The Author(s).