English

Experimental Observation of Large Chern numbers in Photonic Crystals

Optics 2015-12-23 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

Despite great interest in the quantum anomalous Hall phase and its analogs, all experimental studies in electronic and bosonic systems have been limited to a Chern number of one. Here, we perform microwave transmission measurements in the bulk and at the edge of ferrimagnetic photonic crystals. Bandgaps with large Chern numbers of 2, 3, and 4 are present in the experimental results which show excellent agreement with theory. We measure the mode profiles and Fourier transform them to produce dispersion relations of the edge modes, whose number and direction match our Chern number calculations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1504.04399,
  title  = {Experimental Observation of Large Chern numbers in Photonic Crystals},
  author = {Scott A. Skirlo and Ling Lu and Qinghui Yan and Yuichi Igarashi and John Joannopoulos and Marin Soljacic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.04399},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

This experimental work was accepted to PRL on Oct. 13, 2015. Our theoretical work from PRL http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.113904