Unidirectional light transport in dynamically modulated waveguides

Abstract

One-way edge states at the surface of photonic topological insulators are of significant interest for communications, nonlinear and quantum optics. Moreover, when reciprocity is broken in a photonic topological insulator, these states provide protection against disorder, which is of particular importance for slow light applications. Achieving such a one-way edge state, however, requires the construction of a two-dimensional structure. Here, we show how unidiriectional Floquet bands can arise in purely one-dimensional, adiabatically-modulated dynamic systems, in contrasts with the higher dimensionality needed in topological insulators. We also show that, using realistic experimental parameters, the concept can be implemented using both a coupled-resonator optical waveguide and a photonic crystal waveguide. Furthermore, we illustrate the associated protection against disorder, and find it to be of a novel nature when compared to Floquet topological insulators.

References in corpus (9)

• Topological Photonics
• Analogs of quantum Hall effect edge states in photonic crystals
• Topological characterization of periodically-driven quantum systems
• Monolithic Ultrahigh-Q Lithium Niobate Microring Resonator
• A topological quantum optics interface
• Nanophotonic Lithium Niobate Electro-optic Modulators
• Photonic-crystal slabs with a triangular lattice of triangular holes investigated using a guided-mode expansion method
• Haldane Quantum Hall Effect for Light in a Dynamically Modulated Array of Resonators
• Ultrafast tilting of the dispersion of a photonic crystal and adiabatic spectral compression of light pulses

Cited by in corpus (7)

• A single photonic cavity with two independent physical synthetic dimensions
• Experimental band structure spectroscopy along a synthetic dimension
• Observation of strong backscattering in valley-Hall photonic topological interface modes
• Broadband topological slow light through higher momentum-space winding
• Electric fields for light: Propagation of microwave photons along a synthetic dimension
• Coherent resonant transmission
• Quantum correlations from dynamically modulated optical nonlinear interactions