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  • Open Access

Coherent perfect absorption: Zero reflection without linewidth suppression

M. Ebrahimi, Y. Huang, A. Rashedi, and J. P. Davis*

  • *Contact author: jdavis@ualberta.ca
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013261 – Published 9 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zrmm-6ps2

Abstract

Motivated by recent claims, we revisit how coherent perfect absorption (CPA) influences cavity and polaritonic linewidths. Using standard input-output theory and measurements on single-port bare microwave cavities and cavity-magnon hybrids, we find that CPA drives the on-resonance reflection amplitude to zero while the spectral width remains set by the total decay rate. Apparent narrowing observed near CPA is found to be a visual artifact that does not remain upon quantitative analysis. Extending the analysis to cavity magnomechanics, we show that logarithmic plots can exhibit apparent polaromechanical “normal-mode splitting,” whereas linear-scale spectra display no true splitting. These results clarify when CPA modifies amplitudes versus spectral poles, offer practical guidance for data presentation, and indicate that CPA alone is not a route to linewidth suppression or polaromechanical mode splitting in the linear, weak-probe regime.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013261– Published 9 March, 2026
  • Received 16 October 2025
  • Accepted 8 February 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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