English

Engineering topology in waveguide arrays

Optics 2026-03-03 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Other Condensed Matter

Abstract

The topological classification of a system depends on the discrete symmetries of its Hamiltonian. In Floquet photonic waveguide arrays, the abstract symmetries of the Altland--Zirnbauer (AZ) scheme -- chiral, particle-hole, and time-reversal (for photonics, zz-reversal) -- arise from structural properties of the lattice, yet a systematic correspondence has not been established. Here, we illustrate this correspondence for a simpler system of one-dimensional waveguide arrays with real coupling coefficients, showing how bipartite structure and zz-reflection symmetry alone determine the whole AZ class. We further demonstrate that non-bipartite networks -- lacking conventional particle-hole symmetry, chiral symmetry, and zz-reversal symmetry -- can nonetheless support topologically protected boundary states at quasienergy ε=π\varepsilon = \pi, even in one dimension. The protecting symmetry -- \textit{shifted}-particle-hole symmetry -- applies equally to higher-dimensional Floquet waveguides.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.01769,
  title  = {Engineering topology in waveguide arrays},
  author = {Lavi K. Upreti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.01769},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9+2 pages, 9+1 figs, Appendix

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:59:03.950Z