- Photonics Research
- Vol. 9, Issue 4, 622 (2021)
Abstract
1. INTRODUCTION
Topological band-gap (TBG) structures have received extensive attention for electronic and photonic systems [1,2]. Many fantastic topological phenomena are realized in photonic crystals (PhCs) based on the topological photonic band-gap (TPBG) [3,4], such as topological edge states [5–10], Weyl points and nodal lines [11–13], one-way rotating states [14], logic gates [15], and sensors [16]. The TPBGs of one-dimensional (1D) systems are intensively studied, because the systems are simple and can be solved in strict theory. Recently, the connection between the surface impedance of 1D semi-infinite PhC and the geometry phase, also called the Zak phase, was revealed [17]. More importantly, in this original work, a simple method with the self-consistent gauge, based on the reflection coefficient of the semi-infinite 1D PhC models, is established to determine the singularities, which dominate the evolution of TPBG of 1D PhCs. With the introduction of synthetic dimensions or parameter freedoms to the 1D periodic systems, rich topological phenomena, such as the Weyl points and the nodal lines (surfaces) in high-dimensional spaces, are also observed and well studied [11–13,18]. In the reflection phase map, there are phase vortex points (PVPs), but only the PVPs whose eigenvector turns to zero are singularities [11,12]. It is revealed that the different evolutions of singularities between bands correspond to different topological phase transitions [12,13].
Different from the periodic systems, the quasicrystals (QCs) and aperiodic systems, which lack translational symmetry but possess long-range order, display Bragg diffraction spots, and also have complex band-gap structures. Extremely rich transport properties and complex band-gap structures of QCs also imply the rich topology beyond the periodic systems [19]. The first effort to strictly define the topological properties of band-gap structures is done by Kraus
Since there is lack of support from Bloch’s theorem, how waves (electrons, photons, or otherwise) are transmitted through QCs or aperiodic systems is not fully resolved to this day [25]. Generally, researchers have to deal with finite structures for the study of QCs, so that the study of finite-length PhCs is more instructive. Also, inspired by the studies of 1D periodic systems [12,13,18] and with the introduction of synthetic dimensions or parameter freedoms to QCs, more complex band-gap structures in higher dimensional space can possibly open a new window for us to understand the FTBG of QCs. The topological properties of the 1D periodic systems are signed by the singularities of the reflection coefficient, which is from the zero-scattering of each cell, resulting in the non-zero Zak phase or Chern number [12,13,17], even for finite periodic systems [28]. Then it is reasonable for us to make the assumption that the topological number of the 1D QCs or aperiodic systems can also be obtained from the singularities characterized by zero-scattering. Precise theory needs to be established based on the Bott index of 1D QCs and aperiodic systems, which has been proved to be equivalent to the Chern number in 2D translationally invariant systems [29]. In previous works [30,31], it is revealed that the band-gaps of QCs and aperiodic systems can be separated into two classes, the traditional gaps (TGs) and the fractal gaps (FGs), due to the scattering from the periodic interfaces and the multi-scale nested structure of interfaces, respectively. It is natural to think that the topological properties of TGs and FGs may be quite different because of their different scattering origin.
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In this work, we show that the FTBG features of 1D Thue–Morse (TM) systems with one synthetic dimension are generated by the evolutions of two types of singularities and PVPs. The former are characterized by the zero-scattering of the two basic scatterers that compose the TM systems, while the latter are the ordinary transmission resonance from Bragg scattering. Both TGs and FGs of TM systems are closed and reopened when the evolution paths of the first-type singularities pass through them. The second-type singularities only appear when the optical path ratio between two kinds of layers satisfies the ratio of two odd integers, and is indicated by the closing of TGs. A -phase-jump of the reflection coefficient when a TG or FG is closed and reopened is the sign of the topological phase transition. Before and after topological phase transition, unlike the 1D periodic systems whose upper and lower gap-edge states will interchange both the spatial inversion symmetry (SIS) and the field distribution, only the latter will appear for TM systems because of the absence of SIS. The topologically protected edge-states are also found for both TGs and FGs. Although this work is done for 1D TM systems, we believe the similar generation mechanism of FTBG is also available for other 1D or higher dimensional QCs and aperiodic systems.
2. STRUCTURE
The 1D TM system can be generated by the recursive relationship , , where the is obtained by exchanging A and B in the . For example, an TM system can be represented as ABBABAAB [30]. The system is composed of the dielectric layers A and B with widths and , the relative permittivities and , and the relative permeability , respectively. Without loss of generality, we suppose that the background material outside the finite TM system is the same as the A-kind layer. So all B-kind layers can be thought as scatterers, and they are submerged inside the background material. The electric field in the th layer can be written as . The transfer matrix between layers can be expressed as . and are the coefficients of the forward and backward electric field in the th layer. is the wave vector in the th layer. is the transfer matrix between layers. The coefficients of transmission and reflection and the field distribution can be obtained by the transfer matrix of a finite TM system. The central wavelength of the th TG is , where and are optical paths of layer A and B, respectively [31]. In this work, is set as 600 nm, while the structural parameter is . Our study is focused on the frequency regions below the third TG.
It should be noted that the band-gap structure becomes more and more detailed with the increasing order of TM systems. However, when the TM order is large enough, e.g., , the main band-gap structure of TM systems becomes stable, and the physics studied in this work is not influenced by the order of TM systems. So when we discuss the TGs and FGs, we generally choose the order (even or odd) of the system larger than four, and it is irrelevant with the topology of band-gap structure of TM systems. The main difference between even-order and odd-order systems is the location of inversion center, which is only important when we use a certain order TM as a super-cell with a periodic boundary condition and study the topology of the band-gap of such periodic systems (see Appendix A).
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 1.(a)–(c) Transmission spectra of the
To understand the field distribution characteristic of singularities, the electric field (black lines) of states at singularities and the refractive index distributions (blue lines) are shown in Figs. 1(d)–1(f) for a 1D PhC and a TM system, respectively. The 1D PhC shown in Fig. 1(d) is composed with the same two kinds of layers as the TM system in Fig. 1(b). It is known that if we take B-kind layers as the scatterers in the background material of A-kind, the zero-scattering occurs at the singularities of 1D PhC [28]. Because of the zero-scattering of B-kind layers, the of a finite 1D PhC in Fig. 1(d) shows two special properties, (i) the flat field profile through the whole system, which means the amplitude of total field is unchanged, (ii) the flat field amplitude in A-kind layers, which means the field in A-kind layers only contains the forward propagating component. Figures 1(e) and 1(f) also show the similar zero-scattering properties at two types of singularities of TM systems. Because of the same frequency condition of the singularities, the shown in Fig. 1(e) has the same properties as those in Fig. 1(d). For the second-type singularities, the is more complex. First, the field profile is still flat through the whole system, which implies the zero-scattering property of the whole TM system. Second, from these A-kind layers with flat field amplitude, we can find that the scattering from and is zero for the state of the second-type singularities. Because any TM system whose order is greater than two can be decomposed into and , the scattering of the whole TM system should be zero for all second-type singularities.
The physical origin and the field distribution of the first-type singularities can be explained by the transfer matrix method. Regarding the A-kind layers as the background material, we can find two kinds of scatterers, (A)B(A) and (A)BB(A) in the TM system. The elements of the transfer matrix for scatterer (A)B(A) are , . When the condition of the first-type singularities is satisfied, the transfer matrix becomes or , where is the unitary matrix. For scatterer (A)BB(A), we can insert an infinite thin A-kind layer between two B-kind layers, and then the transfer matrix of (A)BB(A) becomes . Obviously, at such a TM system, the incident field can not sense the scattering of B-kind layers at all.
The physical origin of the second-type singularities, which appear only when the th TG is closed, can also been analyzed by similar method. For the central wavelength of the th TG, the second-order trace map [32–34] is
We note that two types of topological singularities in this work have not been strictly demonstrated so far. The gap-closing-reopening is a phenomenon of topological transition, but could not be used as the judgement of topological transition or the existing of topological singularities. Zero-scattering is a much stronger support of the existing of topological singularities, but still not enough. The theoretical demonstration of two types of singularities could be done by counting the number change of resonant modes in upper and lower bands before and after the gap-closing-reopening, which can be regarded as the strict characteristic of topological phase transition for 1D aperiodic systems [35].
Figure 2.(a) Transmission map of the
For more details of the FTBG, we carefully studied two special cases of the transmission and reflection phase maps around the two types of singularities, which are shown in Figs. 2(c), 2(d) and Figs. 2(e), 2(f), respectively. In Figs. 2(c) and 2(d), an SL and an ML intersect at the central frequency of the second TG (signed by two white dashed lines). The second TG is closed since the SL cuts through it, and there is a topological transition with a -phase-jump at two sides of SL. Along the ML represented by the black solid line in Fig. 2(d), we can find a series of PVPs indicated by the white circles which are corresponding to the ordinary resonant transmission for different systems. In the vicinity of the SL and ML intersection, a high-transmission in a wide frequency range is indicated by the white solid line in Fig. 2(c). When , the relative bandwidth of the transmittance higher than 0.9 can reach 30%. As illustrated as Fig. 2(g), the high-transmission region is also robust against 10% disorder strength introduced into , when the optical length is kept as constant. Such a robust high transmission case in wide frequency range is quite rare in low-dimension systems, which can be used to design specific optoelectronic devices. In Figs. 2(e) and 2(f), there is a second-type singularity at the central frequency of the first TG when . Focusing on the frequency range of the first TG (signed by the white dashed lines) and increasing continuously near , a typical topological transition appears such that the first TG becomes thinner, totally closed, and then reopened. Exactly at the point with and , a -phase-jump occurs which makes it possible to realize the topological edge-state in the first TG.
Figure 3.(a) Local transmission map near the second TG of the
Figure 4.(a) Structure composed of two
In fact, to show the existing of a topologically protected edge-state, we choose any value of , as long as is satisfied in the gap. To better show that the edge-state is topological, we propose to connect the TM system with which is topologically non-trivial and an artificial reflector with adjustable reflection phase tuned from 0 to . As illustrated as Fig. 4(d), the edge-states are represented by the blue circles for different , and the gray areas indicate the band. Obviously, an edge-state crosses the entire gap, because of the topology difference.
Figure 5.(a) and (b) Maps of transmission and the reflection phase at the initial position of the
Further theoretical and experimental research can be carried out from the following aspects. Firstly, the relationship between the topological number of QCs (the change of Bott index) and the evolution of singularities can be explored in detail. Secondly, the robust edge-states with high-Q can be experimentally demonstrated, and the broadband transparent feature caused by the topological properties of QCs can be widely used on optical or electromagnetic device design. Thirdly, the mechanism based on singularities could be extended to the high-dimensional QCs, such as the study of more complicated singularities and the characteristics of their evolution paths.
4. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we study the FTBG feature of a 1D TM system in the structural parameter-frequency space, which is generated by the evolving paths of two types of topological singularities and the PVPs. The first-type singularities can evolve along -phase-jump lines which satisfy the condition , while the paths of PVPs, which satisfy the condition , are the mirrored lines of the evolving paths of the first-type singularities. The second-type singularities appear in the th TG when the structural parameter satisfies . The self-similarity of the FTBG feature could be understood by the reappearing satisfaction of these conditions. Different from 1D PhCs, there is no symmetry-interchange at the topological transition in a TM system, while the FDI of the upper and lower gap-edge states will take place in a TM system before and after the TG closing, which can be regarded as a special feature of the topological phase transition in the QCs. The topologically protected edge-states with the exponential decay from the interface between two TM systems are realized at both TGs and FGs. These works will open new windows to understand the fractal topological band-gap structures.
APPENDIX A: THE INVERSION CENTER AND SPACIAL INVERSION SYMMETRY FOR TM SUPER-CELLS WITH PERIODIC BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
Generally, for a finite TM system, there is no inversion center due to the lack of translational symmetry. But, if we use a certain-order-TM structure as a super-cell and set a periodic condition on the super-cell, we can find two inversion centers for both odd- and even-ordered TM super-cells. We call such systems super-cell-TM systems. For an odd-order TM super-cell, the two inversion centers are the middle positions of the and TM super-cells, while these, for even-order or TM super-cells are the start point and the middle position, respectively. For example, the TM system with periodic boundary conditions can be represented as , and the symbol means one inversion center. Meanwhile, and , where means the coordinate of the inversion center, are automatically satisfied. The super-cell-TM systems have almost the same main gaps as the TM systems, and also show the gap-closing-reopening processes as TM systems with different . It has been demonstrated that the reflection phase in the gap range at one inversion center is from 0 to or to 0 in the binary 1D PhCs [
It has been demonstrated that the changes of the spatial inversion symmetry of the upper and lower gap-edge states, can be regarded as a strong evidence of topologically nontrivial phase transition [
Here we choose an super-cell-TM system as an example where , corresponding to four areas in the second TG of the TM system. The of the upper and lower gap-edge states are shown in Fig.?
Figure 6.(a) and (b) Maps of transmission and the reflection phase at the initial position of the
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[46] 46On the transmission map, the width, central frequency, and structure of the FGs are different at two sides of the SL, which is the track of the first-type singularity. If we choose two σ very near the SL, which correspond to the two TM systems, the reflection phase of the left (ϕl) and right (ϕr) TM systems can match well, which satisfies ϕl+ϕr=0. But, due to the slow decaying of the field magnitude, it is difficult to observe the topological edge-state between the two TM systems. However, if we choose σ a little farther away from the SL, due to the gap structure difference, it is difficult to satisfy ϕl+ϕr=0 at a certain frequency inside the two gaps.
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