Optical PT-symmetry and PT-antisymmetry in coherently driven atomic lattices.

We study an ensemble of ultracold atoms trapped in the one-dimensional optical lattices under the N level configuration to examine the absorption and dispersion properties modulated into different ways along the lattice direction z. We find these trapped atoms with a Gaussian density distribution in each period may exhibit either symmetry χp(z)=χp*(-z) or antisymmetry χp(z)=-χp*(-z) of parity-time (PT) in terms of the probe susceptibility. Such intriguing twofold modulations of real (χ'p) and imaginary (χ″p) susceptibilities with a π/2 phase shift are attained by spatially modulating intensities or frequencies of one driving field in a suitable way. The PT-symmetric or PT-antisymmetric atomic lattices correspond in fact to complex photonic crystals and may be extended to develop functional devices like photonic diodes and transistors, a task impossible for real photonic crystals.