Energy-efficient Parity Time-symmetry Broken Electrically Controlled Thermo-optic Devices

We present a rigorous three-dimensional heterostructure electronic–photonic co-integrated simulation framework that incorporates nonlinear material properties for precise modeling of the electrothermally modulated optical effect (ETMOE). The integrated platinum heater is structurally optimized, revealing a critical heater–waveguide separation that exploits broken parity–time (PT) symmetry to sustain single-mode confinement enabling energy-efficient, localized fast modulation. Utilizing the PT-broken regime, a waveguide-integrated state-of-the-art racetrack resonator achieves a π-phase tuning power of 15.55 mW, mitigating unwanted asymmetric heat distribution—nearly half that of reported designs. Extending further, we implement these studied phenomena to realize an ETMOE-based optical switch and a tunable linear amplitude modulator for matrix–vector multiplication, envisioned to contribute to scalable, low-power, and reconfigurable photonic computing.