A Photonic Topological Mode Bound to a Vortex

Abstract

Topological photonics sheds light on some of the surprising phenomena seen in condensed matter physics that arise with the appearance of topological invariants. Optical waveguides provide a well-controlled platform to investigate effects that relate to different topological phases of matter, providing insight into phenomena such as topological insulators and superconductors by direct simulation of the states that are protected by the topology of the system. Here, we observe a mode associated with a topological defect in the bulk of a 2D photonic material by introducing a vortex distortion to an hexagonal lattice and analogous to graphene. These observations are made possible by advances in our experimental methods. We were able to manufacture uniform large two-dimensional photonic crystal structures, containing thousands of identical waveguides arranged in two dimensions, and we developed a new method to excite multiples of these waveguides with a well-defined light field. This allows us to probe the detailed spatial features of topological defect modes for the first time. The observed modes lie mid-gap at zero energy and are closely related to Majorana bound states in superconducting vortices. This is the first experimental demonstration of a mode that is a solution to the Dirac equation in the presence of a vortex, as proposed by Jackiw and Rossi.

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• Topological Photonics
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• Topological protection of photonic mid-gap cavity modes
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• Photonic Topological Anderson Insulators
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• Topological creation and destruction of edge states in photonic graphene
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• Majorana-like zero modes in Kekulé distorted sonic lattices
• Non-Abelian braiding of light
• Mechanical analogue of a Majorana bound state
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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Dirac-vortex topological cavity
• Vortex states in an acoustic Weyl crystal with a topological lattice defect
• Observation of degenerate zero-energy topological states at disclinations in an acoustic lattice
• On-chip beam rotators, adiabatic mode converters, and waveplates through low-loss waveguides with variable cross-sections
• Dirac-vortex topological photonic crystal fibre
• Topologically protected vortex transport via chiral-symmetric disclination
• Observation of Kekulé vortices induced in graphene by hydrogen adatoms
• Monopole topological resonators
• ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ phases and Majorana spectroscopy in paired Bose-Hubbard chains
• Topological Aspects of Dirac Fermions in a Kagomé Lattice
• Observation of Embedded Topology in a Trivial Bulk via Projective Crystal Symmetry
• Observation of Square-Root Higher-Order Topological States in Photonic Waveguide Arrays
• Laser-written integrated photonics in glass-ceramics Zerodur