Asymmetric Transmission Through a Classical Analogue of the Aharonov-Bohm Ring

It has been predicted that new physics and technology are enabled for quantum systems that suffer from partial decoherence, in the intermediate range between coherent quantum evolution and incoherent classical physics. We explore the asymmetric transmission through a classical analogue of the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) mesoscopic ring that supports a 3:1 asymmetry in transmission times, augmented with lossy features that act preferentially on the longer-lingering waves. Such a device is realized as a linear microwave graph utilizing a gyrator to create the 3:1 transmission time delay asymmetry, along with both homogeneous and localized losses, to produce an imbalance in wave transmission through the device. We demonstrate asymmetric transmission through the microwave-ring graph as a function of loss in both simulation and experiment, and in both the frequency- and time-domain. The microwave ring-graph results are compared to a numerical simulation representative of a class of recent models proposing dephasing-induced transport asymmetry in few-channel quantum systems, and parallels are noted.