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arXiv:2512.17456 · Physica Scripta

Single-Photon Scattering in a Waveguide Coupled to a Lossy or Gain Giant Atom

Yu Xin, Jia-Ming Zhang, Bing Chen

quant-phSubmitted Dec 19, 2025• Announced Dec 22, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

This work investigates single-photon scattering in a one-dimensional coupled-resonator waveguide coupled to a giant atom with a complex on-site energy. Within the generalized projection operator formalism, we derive analytical expressions for the scattering coefficients. We find that a lossy giant atom absorbs the incident wave, whereas a gain giant atom not only amplifies the incident wave but also leads to scattering divergence at certain energies, corresponding to spectral singularities. We explore the critical scattering dynamics associated with these singularities, and attribute the persistent wave emission to the existence of a stationary bound state in the continuum. Due to the presence of this bound state, the conventional time-independent scattering theory proves inadequate for such a non-Hermitian system. Furthermore, we show that the system with gain always features at least one time-growing bound state, which dominates the long-time dynamics, and we verify our time-dependent theoretical predictions via numerical simulations of Gaussian wave packet scattering.

Comments
21 pages, 4 figures

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We investigate the single-photon scattering spectra of a giant atom coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide via multiple connection points or a continuous coupling region. Using a full quantum mechanical method, we obtain the general analytic expressions for the single-photon scattering coefficients, which are valid in both the Markovian and the non-Markovian regimes. We summarize the influences of the nondipole effects, mainly caused by the phases accumulated by photons traveling between coupling points, on the scattering spectra. We find that under the Markovian limit, the phase decay is detuning independent, resulting in Lorentzian line shapes characterized by the Lamb shifts and the effective decay rates, while in the non-Markovian regime, the accumulated phases become detuning dependent, giving rise to non-Lorentzian line shapes, characterized by multiple side peaks and total transmission points. Another interesting phenomenon in the non-Markovian regime is the generation of a broad photonic band gap by a single giant atom. We further generalize the case of discrete coupling points to the continuum limit with atom coupling to the waveguide via a continuous area, and analyze the scattering spectra for some typical distributions of coupling strength.