非厄米光子学：客座编辑语

Based on their expansive flexibility of controlling the propagation, coupling, and confinement of light, photonic systems are a prime physical platform to realize the full potential of devices whose functionality is enhanced by symmetry and topology. Most notably, the capability to manipulate photonic eigenstates through optical gain and loss and non-reciprocal couplings provides a powerful toolbox for tailoring non-Hermitian Hamiltonians1,2 to study symmetry paradigms that go beyond conventional condensed matter systems—marking the birth of non-Hermitian photonics.3 Rapid developments of these concepts over the past decade have already empowered us to achieve complex optical responses and unique light–matter interactions in both classical and quantum domains. Despite the similarities shared with electron-based quantum systems, non-Hermitian photonics is rooted in the fundamentals of electromagnetics and governed by bosonic statistics. The direct inclusion of optical non-Hermiticity in