Observation of Light Guiding by Artificial Gauge Fields

Abstract

The use of artificial gauge fields enables systems of uncharged particles to behave as if affected by external fields. Generated by geometry or external modulation, artificial gauge fields have been instrumental in demonstrating topological phenomena in many physical systems, including photonics, cold atoms and acoustic waves. Here, we demonstrate experimentally for the first time waveguiding by means of artificial gauge fields. To this end, we construct artificial gauge fields in a photonic waveguide array, by using waveguides with nontrivial trajectories. First, we show that tilting the waveguide arrays gives rise to gauge fields that are different in the core and the cladding, shifting their respective dispersion curves, and in turn confining the light to the core. In a more advanced setting, we demonstrate waveguiding in a medium with the same artificial gauge field and the same dispersion everywhere, but with a phase-shift in the gauge as the only difference between the core and the cladding. The phase-shifted sinusoidal trajectories of the waveguides give rise to waveguiding via bound states in the continuum. Creating waveguiding and bound states in the continuum by means of artificial gauge fields is relevant to a wide range of physical systems, ranging from photonics and microwaves to cold atoms and acoustics.

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• Experimental observation of Aharonov-Bohm caging using orbital angular momentum modes in optical waveguides
• Non-Abelian lattice gauge fields in the photonic synthetic frequency dimension
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• Floquet topological insulator laser
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• Generalized Laws of Refraction and Reflection at Interfaces between Different Photonic Artificial Gauge Fields
• Nonlinear localization of light using the Pancharatnam-Berry phase
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• Highly-Degenerate Photonic Waveguide Structures for Holonomic Computation
• Floquet edge solitons in modulated trimer waveguide arrays
• Bulk Localised Transport States in Infinite and Finite Quasicrystals via Magnetic Aperiodicity
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• Waveguiding driven by the Pancharatnam-Berry phase
• Two-flux tunable Aharonov-Bohm caging in a photonic lattice
• Wave manipulation via delay-engineered periodic potentials
• Symmetry-protected non-Abelian geometric phases in optical waveguides with nonorthogonal modes
• Discrete solitons in zigzag waveguide arrays with different types of linear mixing between nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor couplings
• Flux-mediated effective Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model in an impurity decorated diamond chain
• Synthetic plasmonic lattice formation through invariant frequency comb excitation in graphene structures
• Floquet defect solitons
• Lasing in para-Fermi class-B microring resonator arrays
• Nonlinear compact localized modes in flux-dressed octagonal-diamond photonic lattice
• Tilting flat bands in an empty microcavity
• Non-Abelian gauge field optics in the time domain
• Eigenvalues bifurcating from the continuum in two-dimensional potentials generating non-Hermitian gauge fields
• Directionality and quantum backfire in continuous-time quantum walks from delocalized states: Exact results
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