Topological band structure via twisted photons in a degenerate cavity
Abstract
Synthetic dimensions based on particles' internal degrees of freedom, such as frequency, spatial modes and arrival time, have attracted significant attention. They offer ideal large-scale lattices to simulate nontrivial topological phenomena. Exploring more synthetic dimensions is one of the paths toward higher dimensional physics. In this work, we design and experimentally control the coupling among synthetic dimensions consisting of the intrinsic photonic orbital angular momentum and spin angular momentum degrees of freedom in a degenerate optical resonant cavity, which generates a periodically driven spin-orbital coupling system. We directly characterize the system's properties, including the density of states, energy band structures and topological windings, through the transmission intensity measurements. Our work demonstrates a novel mechanism for exploring the spatial modes of twisted photons as the synthetic dimension, which paves the way to design rich topological physics in a highly compact platform.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2202.13516,
title = {Topological band structure via twisted photons in a degenerate cavity},
author = {Mu Yang and Hao-Qing Zhang and Yu-Wei Liao and Zheng-Hao Liu and Zheng-Wei Zhou and Xing-Xiang Zhou and Jin-Shi Xu and Yong-Jian Han and Chuan-Feng Li and Guang-Can Guo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.13516},
year = {2022}
}