Mutually coupled modes of a pair of active LRC circuits, one with amplification and another with an equivalent amount of attenuation, provide an experimental realization of a wide class of systems where gain/loss mechanisms break the Hermiticity while preserving parity-time PT symmetry. For a value PT of the gain/loss strength parameter the eigen-frequencies undergo a spontaneous phase transition from real to complex values, while the normal modes coalesce acquiring a definite chirality. The consequences of the phase-transition in the spatiotemporal energy evolution are also presented.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.2913
Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)