Realizing total reciprocity violation in the phase for photon scattering.

Reciprocity is when wave or quantum scattering satisfies a symmetry property, connecting a scattering process with the reversed one. While reciprocity involves the interchange of source and detector, it is fundamentally different from rotational invariance, and is a generalization of time reversal invariance, occurring in absorptive media as well. Due to its presence at diverse areas of physics, it admits a wide variety of applications.