Seeing bulk topological properties of band insulators in small photonic lattices

Abstract

We present a general scheme for measuring the bulk properties of non-interacting tight-binding models realized in arrays of coupled photonic cavities. Specifically, we propose to implement a single unit cell of the targeted model with tunable twisted boundary conditions in order to simulate large systems and, most importantly, to access bulk topological properties experimentally. We illustrate our method by demonstrating how to measure topological invariants in a two-dimensional quantum Hall-like model.

5 pages, 2 figures; with Supplemental Material (2 pages)

References in corpus (7)

• Classification of topological insulators and superconductors in three spatial dimensions
• Topological Field Theory of Time-Reversal Invariant Insulators
• Topological Crystalline Insulators
• Observation of Topological Phase Transitions in Photonic Quasicrystals
• Low-Disorder Microwave Cavity Lattices for Quantum Simulation with Photons
• Measuring topological invariants in photonic systems
• Zak phase of photons in optical waveguide lattices

Cited by in corpus (23)

• Topological Photonics
• Topological Photonics
• Synthetic dimensions in integrated photonics: From optical isolation to 4D quantum Hall physics
• Topological Phase Transitions and Thouless Pumping of Light in Photonic Waveguide Arrays
• Measurement of the Zak phase of photonic bands through the interface states of metasurface/photonic crystal
• Measurement of a topological edge invariant in a microwave network
• The 6D quantum Hall effect and 3D topological pumps
• Measurement of Chern numbers through center-of-mass responses
• Simulation and Detection of Photonic Chern Insulators in One-Dimensional Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics Lattice
• Phase spectroscopy of topological invariants in photonic crystals
• L lines, C points and Chern numbers: understanding band structure topology using polarization fields
• Probing bulk topological invariants using leaky photonic lattices
• Steady-state Hall response and quantum geometry of driven-dissipative lattices
• Probing band topology using modulational instability
• Klein tunneling in driven-dissipative photonic graphene
• Solitons in one-dimensional lattices with a flat band
• Hamiltonian Tomography of Photonic Lattices
• Vanishing Hall Response of Charged Fermions in a Transverse Magnetic Field
• Linking topological features of the Hofstadter model to optical diffraction figures
• Mean-chiral displacement in coherently driven photonic lattices and its application to synthetic frequency dimensions
• A semiclassical treatment of spinor topological effects in driven, inhomogeneous insulators under external electromagnetic fields
• Out-of-equilibrium physics in driven dissipative coupled resonator arrays
• Simulating topological phases and topological phase transitions with classical strings