Experimentally Detecting Quantized Zak Phases without Chiral Symmetry in Photonic Lattices

Abstract

Symmetries play a major role in identifying topological phases of matter and in establishing a direct connection between protected edge states and topological bulk invariants via the bulk-boundary correspondence. One-dimensional lattices are deemed to be protected by chiral symmetry, exhibiting quantized Zak phases and protected edge states, but not for all cases. Here, we experimentally realize an extended Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with broken chiral symmetry by engineering one-dimensional zigzag photonic lattices, where the long-range hopping breaks chiral symmetry but ensures the existence of inversion symmetry. By the averaged mean displacement method, we detect topological invariants directly in the bulk through the continuous-time quantum walk of photons. Our results demonstrate that inversion symmetry protects the quantized Zak phase, but edge states can disappear in the topological nontrivial phase, thus breaking the conventional bulk-boundary correspondence. Our photonic lattice provides a useful platform to study the interplay among topological phases, symmetries, and the bulk-boundary correspondence.

6 pages, 4 figures, 53 references, 1 supplemental materials

References in corpus (8)

• Topological Photonics
• Quantum walks of correlated particles
• Edge Modes, Degeneracies, and Topological Numbers in Non-Hermitian Systems
• Topological Quantum Matter with Ultracold Gases in Optical Lattices
• Photonic topological pumping through the edges of a dynamical four-dimensional quantum Hall system
• Fractional Bloch oscillations in photonic lattices
• Aharonov-Bohm photonic cages in waveguide and coupled resonator lattices by synthetic magnetic fields
• Ultracold fermions in a one-dimensional bipartite optical lattice: metal-insulator transitions driven by shaking

Cited by in corpus (10)

• A brief review of topological photonics in one, two, and three dimensions
• Complex Berry phase and imperfect non-Hermitian phase transitions
• Probing Bulk Band Topology from Time Boundary Effect in Synthetic Dimension
• Topological magnons in one-dimensional ferromagnetic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with anisotropic interaction
• Topological metals constructed by sliding quantum wire arrays
• Soliton metacrystals: topology and chirality
• Exotic quantum light-matter interactions in bilayer square lattices
• Topological aspects in nonlinear optical frequency conversion
• Mirror-induced effects in cavity polaritonics: Influence on edge states
• Wilson Loop and Topological Properties in 3D Woodpile Photonic Crystal