No exceptional precision of exceptional point sensors

Abstract

Recently, sensors with resonances at exceptional points (EPs) have been suggested to have a vastly improved sensitivity due to the extraordinary scaling of the complex frequency splitting of the $n$ initially degenerate modes with the $n$-th root of the perturbation. We show here that the resulting quantum-limited signal to noise at EPs is proportional to the perturbation, and comparable to other sensors, thus providing the same precision. The complex frequency splitting close to EPs is therefore not suited to estimate the precision of EP sensors. The underlying reason of this counter-intuitive result is that the mode fields, described by the eigenvectors, are equal for all modes at the EP, and are strongly changing with the perturbation.