The dawn of non-Hermitian optics

Recent years have seen a tremendous progress in the theory and experimental implementations of non-Hermitian photonics, including all-lossy optical systems as well as parity-time symmetric systems consisting of both optical loss and gain. This progress has led to a host of new intriguing results in the physics of light–matter interactions with promising potential applications in optical sciences and engineering. In this comment, we present a brief perspective on the developments in this field and discuss possible future research directions that can benefit from the notion of non-Hermitian engineering