Orbital Frontiers: Harnessing Higher Modes in Photonic Simulators

Abstract

Photonic platforms have emerged as versatile and powerful classical simulators of quantum dynamics, providing clean, controllable optical analogs of extended structured (i.e., crystalline) electronic systems. While most realizations to date have used only the fundamental mode in each site, recent advances in structured light - particularly the use of higher-order spatial modes, including those with orbital angular momentum - are enabling richer dynamics and new functionalities. These additional degrees of freedom facilitate the emulation of phenomena ranging from topological band structures and synthetic gauge fields to orbitronics. In this perspective, we discuss how exploiting the internal structure of higher-order modes is reshaping the scope and capabilities of photonic platforms for simulating quantum phenomena.

References in corpus (60)

• Topological insulators and superconductors
• Topological Photonics
• Topological Photonics
• Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators
• Possible Realization of Directional Optical Waveguides in Photonic Crystals with Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry
• Spin-orbit interactions of light
• Quantized Electric Multipole Insulators
• Topological quantum chemistry
• Lasing in topological edge states of a 1D lattice
• Topological Defects and Gapless Modes in Insulators and Superconductors
• Symmetry-based Indicators of Band Topology in the 230 Space Groups
• Nonlinear topological photonics
• Topological protection of photonic mid-gap cavity modes
• Exciton-polariton topological insulator
• Observation of photonic anomalous Floquet Topological Insulators
• Direct observation of Dirac cones and a flatband in a honeycomb lattice for polaritons
• Light propagation and localization in modulated photonic lattices and waveguides
• Observation of Photonic Topological Valley-Hall Edge States
• Observation of novel edge states in photonic graphene
• Photonic Topological Anderson Insulators
• Topological creation and destruction of edge states in photonic graphene
• Artificial Gauge Field for Photons in Coupled Cavity Arrays
• Topologically Robust Transport of Photons in a Synthetic Gauge Field
• Orbitronics: the Intrinsic Orbital Hall Effect in p-Doped Silicon
• Orbitronics: Orbital Currents in Solids
• Artificial gauge fields in materials and engineered systems
• Sculpting oscillators with light within a nonlinear quantum fluid
• Unveiling pseudospin and angular momentum in photonic graphene
• Polariton Condensation in an optically induced 2D potentia
• Fractional Bloch oscillations in photonic lattices
• Bound states in the continuum of higher-order topological insulators
• Giant Intrinsic Spin and Orbital Hall Effects in Sr2MO4 (M=Ru,Rh,Mo)
• Tilted and type-III Dirac cones emerging from flat bands in photonic orbital graphene
• Orbital edge states in a photonic honeycomb lattice
• Spontaneous spin bifurcations and ferromagnetic phase transitions in a spinor exciton-polariton condensate
• Quantized Fractional Thouless Pumping of Solitons
• Observation of Light Guiding by Artificial Gauge Fields
• Realization of all-optical vortex switching in exciton-polariton condensates
• Polariton condensation in $S$- and $P$-flatbands in a two-dimensional Lieb lattice
• Photonic quadrupole topological insulator using orbital-induced synthetic flux
• Thermalization of orbital angular momentum beams in multimode optical fibers
• Coherent topological polariton laser
• Experimental observation of Aharonov-Bohm caging using orbital angular momentum modes in optical waveguides
• Point-Defect-Localized Bound States in the Continuum in Photonic Crystals and Structured Fibers
• Dynamic defects in photonic Floquet topological insulators
• Quantum fluids of light in all-optical scatterer lattices
• Many-Body Non-Hermitian Skin Effect for Multipoles
• Experimental observation of inter-orbital coupling
• Thermalization of light's orbital angular momentum in nonlinear multimode waveguide systems
• Generalized Laws of Refraction and Reflection at Interfaces between Different Photonic Artificial Gauge Fields
• Orbitronics in Two-dimensional Materials
• Antiferromagnetic Ising model in a triangular vortex lattice of quantum fluids of light
• Nature of Optical Thermodynamic Pressure Exerted in Highly Multimoded Nonlinear Systems
• Multistable circular currents of polariton condensates trapped in ring potentials
• Transverse Anderson localization of surface plasmon polaritons
• Circular polarization reversal of half-vortex cores in polariton condensates
• A mono-atomic orbital-based 1D topological crystalline insulator
• Nonlinear breathers with crystalline symmetries
• Nonlinear Switch and Spatial Lattice Solitons of Photonic s-p Orbitals
• Flux-mediated effective Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model in an impurity decorated diamond chain