Nonlinearity-induced photonic topological insulator
Abstract
The hallmark feature of topological insulators renders edge transport virtually impervious to scattering at defects and lattice disorder. In our work, we experimentally demonstrate a topological system, using a photonic platform, in which the very existence of the topological phase is brought about by nonlinearity. Whereas in the linear regime, the lattice structure remains topologically trivial, light beams launched above a certain power threshold drive the system into its transient topological regime, and thereby define a nonlinear unidirectional channel along its edge. Our work studies topological properties of matter in the nonlinear regime, and may pave the way towards compact devices that harness topological features in an on-demand fashion.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2010.12250,
title = {Nonlinearity-induced photonic topological insulator},
author = {Lukas J. Maczewsky and Matthias Heinrich and Mark Kremer and Sergey K. Ivanov and Max Ehrhardt and Franklin Martinez and Yaroslav V. Kartashov and Vladimir V. Konotop and Lluis Torner and Dieter Bauer and Alexander Szameit},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.12250},
year = {2023}
}