
- Photonics Research
- Vol. 10, Issue 1, 197 (2022)
Abstract
1. INTRODUCTION
The proposal for topological phases of matter opens up a new field for the study of condensed matter physics [1–5]. Moreover, the concept of the topological insulator (TI) has been introduced into the photonic [6–11] and phononic systems [12–16]. Due to the unique backscattering-immune and good robustness of the topologically protected edge state [11,12,17–19], topological photonic insulators provide potential support for the development of topological devices, such as optical waveguides [17,20] and topological slow light [21,22]. Particularly, higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs) [6,7,23–28], which go beyond the conventional bulk-edge correspondence [29,30] have been introduced in recent years. An
In recent years, the sandwiched structures of topological photonics or phonons have attracted much attention [21,33–38]. The Dirac crystal is introduced into TIs to form three-layer heterostructures, the waveguide states of which feature gapless dispersion, momentum-valley locking, and immunity against defects [34,35]. Also, the photonic sandwiched structures, including trivial/topological/trivial and topological/air/topological heterostructures based on a hexagonal lattice, are also investigated, which provide a new degree of freedom in manipulating the spin-locked unidirectional photonic flow [36–38]. Therefore, this sandwiched structure is more flexible, which provides an effective way for high-capacity energy transport, compared with the two-phase structures hosting the edge states.
In this work, we propose a sandwiched structure composed of ordinary-topological-ordinary photonic crystal slabs (PCSs), which possess C-4 symmetry. The heterostructure can generate two coupled edge states (CESs) [33] in the bulk bandgap, which originate from the coupling between the two topological edge states along two neighboring ordinary-topological interfaces. After adjusting the coupling strength by controlling the unit number of topological PCSs, a new bandgap between two CESs is found, and two coupled corner states (CCSs) appear in the new gap. CCSs are different from the topological corner state, although CCSs are robust and strongly localized. Most previous studies on corner states are limited to the topological corner states of HOTIs. We explore the nontopological corner states, i.e., CCSs, hoping to broaden the multidimensional operation of photonics. Finally, we visualize these states experimentally by using the near-field scanning technique in a sandwiched bending structure, including CESs, CCSs, and the topological corner state. The realization of CESs and CCSs makes the control of a light wave more flexible, which is expected to promote the development of integrated topological devices.
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2. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The sandwiched waveguide structure we propose includes two kinds of PCSs with different topological properties, which possess a square lattice geometry. Here, we only consider TM-like modes, and we use a PCS with dielectric cylinders on a perfect electric conductor for achieving large height-diameter ratio and filtering out TE-like modes [7]. The original PCS arrangement is shown in Fig. 1(a), and the spacing between the nearest neighboring dielectric cylinders is equal to
Figure 1.(a) Schematic of the PCS with
Here, we calculate the band structure for TM polarization of the two PCSs with
Next, we investigate the CESs and corner states in ordinary-topological-ordinary (OTO) sandwiched structure. (The counterparts of topological-ordinary-topological (TOT) sandwiched structure are also shown in Appendix B.) One unit of schematic diagram for the OTO structure is shown in Fig. 2(a), and the number of TI units is denoted by N. The parameters of TI and OI regions are the same as those of Fig. 1(d). In the sandwiched structure, there are two interfaces between OI and TI lattices, which are represented by two black dashed lines. We know that the topological edge state decays exponentially away from the OT interface [shown in the inset of Fig. 1(f)], so when the number of TI units is large enough, the two interfaces can be regarded infinitely far apart, and each interface can support an isolated topological edge state. However, when N decreases, the two edge states will couple due to the closeness of the two interfaces, and the two CESs are formed in the bandgap. Here, we give the projected bands of
Figure 2.(a) Schematic diagram of OTO sandwiched structure. The number of TI units is denoted by
In the projected band structure of Fig. 2(b), the blue and red curves are used to represent the two CESs, and the
Then, in order to observe the two CESs experimentally, we fabricate a sample consisting of OTO bend as shown in Fig. 3(a), and the black dashed line indicates the center of the TI domain. The material of dielectric cylinders is alumina ceramics with a relative dielectric permittivity of
Figure 3.(a) Photograph of the experimental OTO bending structure with
Because the corner-induced filling abnormally leads to fractional charge, the OTO bending structure also has topological corner state (also seen in Appendix A). By eigenmode calculations, the higher-order topological state at around 5.17 GHz [denoted by the orange dashed line in Fig. 2(b)] is always found with different N, which is almost the same as that of the OT corner structure [shown in Fig. 1(f)]. In addition, we can see from Fig. 2(b) that in all the projected band structures for different N,
In experiment, the excitation source should be placed at the black dot position (this position should be the nondiagonal position of the bend to excite all three corner states), shown in Fig. 4(a). In order to visualize the evolution of various states with frequency, we use the probe at different positions to detect the bulk (brown), coupled edge (blue), coupled corner and topological corner (red) states’ responses, as shown in Fig. 4(a). In the frequency ranging from 4.3 to 5.4 GHz, the measured spectra of the three probes are shown in Fig. 4(b), where high values mean the existence of eigenstates and low values mean the presence of a bandgap. The spectra clearly indicate the edge and corner (including topological and coupled) modes appearing in the bandgap. It is found that the symmetric CES has a narrow range of response around 4.55 GHz, while there is a continuous response of the antisymmetric CES from 4.76 to 5.1 GHz, in good agreement with the dispersions of the CESs in Fig. 2(b) (right panel). Moreover, the spectrum obtained by the corner probe [indicated by the red dot in Fig. 4(a)] clearly shows three sharp and strong peaks, which correspond to the three corner states denoted by the dashed lines in the right panel of Fig. 2(b). In the gap between symmetric and asymmetric CESs, there are two peaks at around 4.66 and 4.74 GHz, respectively, which correspond to CCSs. The third peak is close to 5.17 GHz, indicating the topological corner state. Here we give the simulated (top) and experimentally measured (bottom) field distributions
Figure 4.(a) Simplified schematic of the experimental OTO bend structure in Fig.
Further, we compare the localization of coupled and topological corner states by calculating the mode area [44],
Finally, we introduce defects to numerically verify the robustness of topological and coupled corner states. We mainly study two types of defects: disordered dielectric cylinders and removed dielectric cylinders. We consider placing an excitation source near the corner for the simulation, as in Fig. 4(a). For the first type of defect, we move the dielectric cylinders near the corner and at the corner, respectively, as shown in Figs. 5(a) and 5(b). For the second type of defect, we remove some cylinders at the outer interface between OI and TI, as depicted in Fig. 5(c). For the two CCSs and the topological corner state, the excitation frequencies of the three corner states are 4.66, 4.74, and 5.17 GHz, respectively. The simulated field distributions are shown in Fig. 5, which are almost the same as those of Figs. 4(c)–4(e), and the results demonstrate that both topological and CCSs are robust against defects and disorders. In addition, we calculate the frequencies of eigenstates for the three corner states by introducing the defects of Fig. 5 and find the offsets of frequencies are very small (all less than 0.02 GHz), which also shows that the three corner states have strong robustness.
Figure 5.(a), (b) Schematics of the sample with a shift of one cylinder and
3. CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, we theoretically investigate the CESs and the three corner states in a proposed OTO sandwiched structure, and visualize these states experimentally by using the near-field scanning technique based on pure dielectric PCSs. Compared with topological edge states in a two-phase structure, the CESs have more diverse symmetries and a high capacity of energy flow. The CCSs can be found in the gap between the two CESs. The multiple corner states, including topological and CCSs, are all robust to defects, which have broad application prospects and can promote the development of integrated photon devices [45,46]. Although our research is carried out at a microwave frequency, the results can also be realized at optical frequency by micronanomachining [47]. In addition, we believe that coupled states exist not only in photonic systems and expect to observe a similar effect in other systems, such as phonon and electron systems.
APPENDIX A: PRIMITIVE GENERATOR AND TOPOLOGICAL INDEX
In general, the classification of
Figure 6.(a) Maximal Wyckoff positions of
The topological corner state arises from a filling anomaly that is caused by the mismatch between the number of particles required and crystal symmetry, which can be described by the topological index constructed by the primitive generator. Based on the rotation eigenvalues at HFCs
APPENDIX B: CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TOT STRUCTURE
In addition to the OTO PCSs mentioned in the main text, there is another kind of sandwiched structure, i.e., TOT PCSs. The schematic diagram of TOT structure is shown in Fig.
Figure 7.(a) Schematic diagram of TOT sandwiched structure; the number of OI units is denoted by
Moreover, the topological corner state always exists in TOT bend structure [as shown in Figs.
APPENDIX C: MORE SIMULATED FIELDS OF TOPOLOGICAL AND CCSs IN A BOX-SHAPED OTO STRUCTURE
In this section, we investigate the topological and CCSs in a box-shaped OTO structure. The parameters of TI and OI regions are the same as those of Fig.
When the size of a box-shaped OTO structure is
Figure 8.(a)
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