Chirality-enabled topological phase transitions in parity-time symmetric systems

Photonic spin Hall effect (PSHE) in chiral PT-symmetric systems exhibits many exotic features, but the underlying physical mechanism has not been well elucidated. Here, through rigorous calculations based on full-wave theory, we reveal the physical mechanism of the exotic PSHE and identify a chirality-enabled topological phase transition. When circularly polarized light is incident on a chiral PT-symmetric system, the transmitted beam contains two components: a spin-flipped abnormal mode that acquires a geometric phase (exhibiting a vortex or a spin-Hall shift), and a spin-maintained normal mode that does not exhibit such a phase. If the phase difference between the cross-polarized Fresnel coefficients cannot be ignored, it results in a chirality-enabled phase and intensity distribution in the abnormal mode, which induces an exotic PSHE. Consequently, as the incident angle increases, a chirality-induced topological phase transition occurs, namely the transition from the vortex generation to the exotic PSHE. Finally, we confirm that the asymmetric and periodic PSHE in the chiral slab is also related to the phase difference between the cross-polarized Fresnel coefficients. These concepts and findings also provide an opportunity for unifying the phenomena of topological phase transitions in various spin-orbit photonic systems.