Switching between singular points and exceptional-point-enhanced sensing in non-Hermitian photonic structures

We investigate the exceptional points in a two-layer cylindrical waveguide structure consisting of absorbing and nonabsorbing dielectrics. We show that by tuning the parameters of the structure the complex effective indices of two waveguide modes can coalesce so that an exceptional point is formed. We show that the sensitivity of the effective index of the waveguide mode is enhanced at the exceptional point. We also investigate using phase-change materials in multilayer structures to switch between singular points. We show that in multilayer structures consisting of phasechange, lossless dielectric, lossy, and gain materials, absorbing or spectral singularities can be switched to exceptional points, and self-dual spectral singularities can be switched to unidirectional spectral singularities by switching the phasechange material from its crystalline to its amorphous phase. Our results could be important for developing new compact reconfigurable singularity-enhanced optical devices.