Photonic ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ topological Anderson insulators

Abstract

That disorder can induce nontrivial topology is a surprising discovery in topological physics. As a typical example, Chern topological Anderson insulators (TAIs) have been realized in photonic systems, where the topological phases exist without symmetry protection. In this work, by taking TM and TE polarizations as pseudo-spin degrees of freedom, we theoretically propose a scheme to realize disorder-induced symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phase transitions in two-dimensional photonic crystals (PCs) with a combined time-reversal, mirror and duality symmetry ${\mathcal{T}}_f=\mathcal{T}{M}_z\mathcal{D}$. In particular, we demonstrate that the disorder-induced SPT phase persists even without pseudo-spin conservation, thereby realizing a photonic ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ TAI, in contrast to a $\mathbb{Z}$-classified quantum spin Hall (QSH) TAI with decoupled spins. By formulating a new scattering approach, we show that the topology of both the QSH and ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ TAIs can be manifested by the accumulated spin rotations of the reflected waves from the PCs. Using a transmission structure, we also illustrate the trivialization of a disordered QSH phase with an even integer topological index caused by spin coupling.

7 pages, 4 figures. Supplemental materials (24 pages, 14 figures) are added

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Cited by in corpus (22)

• Topological photonic alloy
• Topological Anderson amorphous insulator
• Realization of time-reversal invariant photonic topological Anderson insulators
• Topological inverse Anderson insulator
• Structural disorder-induced topological phase transitions in quasicrystals
• Observation of disorder-induced boundary localization
• Third-order topological insulator induced by disorder
• Band alignment effect in the topological photonic alloy
• Fibonacci-Modulation-Induced Multiple Topological Anderson Insulators
• Anderson Localization and Swing Mobility Edge in Curved Spacetime
• Random-Flux-Induced Transition Sequence between Weak and Strong Topological Phases with Anisotropic Localization Properties
• Topological Anderson insulators by latent symmetry
• Disorder-driven exceptional points and concurrent topological phase transitions in non-Hermitian systems
• Recent progress on disorder-induced topological phases
• Multiple reentrant topological windows induced by generalized Bernoulli disorder
• Topological band insulators without translational symmetry
• Photonic topological Anderson insulator in a two-dimensional atomic lattice
• Magnetic doping-induced second-order and first-order topological phase transition inthe photonic alloy
• Anomalous Non-Hermitian Topological Anderson Insulator
• Non-self-averaging topological Anderson insulator
• Disorder effects in two-dimensional flat-band system with next-nearest-neighbor hopping
• Topological Anderson insulator and reentrant topological transitions in a mosaic trimer lattice