Edge Solitons in Nonlinear Photonic Topological Insulators

The Peierls-Nabarro barrier is a discrete effect that frequently occurs in discrete nonlinear systems. A signature of the barrier is the slowing and eventual stopping of discrete solitary waves. This work examines intense electromagnetic waves propagating through a periodic honeycomb lattice of helically-driven waveguides, which serves as a paradigmatic Floquet topological insulator. Here it is shown that discrete topologically protected edge modes do not suffer from the typi...

Topological insulators are a new class of materials that have engendered considerable research interest among the condensed matter community owing primarily to their application prospects in quantum computations and spintronics. Many of the associated phenomena, however, can be well reproduced in classical photonic systems with the additional advantage of relatively less demanding fabrication and engineered system characteristics. Therefore, the photonic analogs of topologica...

Topological photonics is a rapidly emerging field of research in which geometrical and topological ideas are exploited to design and control the behavior of light. Drawing inspiration from the discovery of the quantum Hall effects and topological insulators in condensed matter, recent advances have shown how to engineer analogous effects also for photons, leading to remarkable phenomena such as the robust unidirectional propagation of light, which hold great promise for appli...

Nonlinearities in lattices with topological band structures can induce topological interfaces in the bulk of structures and give rise to bulk solitons in the topological bandgaps. Here we study a photonic Chern insulator with saturable nonlinearity and show the existence of topological bulk solitons. The fundamental bulk solitons exhibit as semi-vortex solitons, where only one pseudospin component has a nonzero vorticity. The bulk solitons have equal angular momentum at diffe...

One-way edge states at the surface of photonic topological insulators are of significant interest for communications, nonlinear and quantum optics. Moreover, when reciprocity is broken in a photonic topological insulator, these states provide protection against disorder, which is of particular importance for slow light applications. Achieving such a one-way edge state, however, requires the construction of a two-dimensional structure. Here, we show how unidiriectional Floquet...

The hallmark of topological insulators is the scatter-free propagation of waves in topologically protected edge channels. This transport is strictly chiral on the outer edge of the medium, and therefore capable of bypassing sharp corners and imperfections, even in the presence of substantial disorder. In photonics, two-dimensional topological edge states have been demonstrated on several different platforms, and are emerging as a promising tool for robust lasers, quantum devi...

We theoretically introduce a new type of topological dipole solitons propagating in a Floquet topological insulator based on a kagome array of helical waveguides. Such solitons bifurcate from two edge states belonging to different topological gaps and have bright envelopes of different symmetries: fundamental for one component, and dipole for the other. The formation of dipole solitons is enabled by unique spectral features of the kagome array which allow the simultaneous coe...

We study discrete nonlinear edge excitations of polaritonic kagome lattice. We show that when nontrivial topological phase of polaritons is realized, the kagome lattice permits propagation of bright solitons formed from topological edge states.

In this work, we demonstrate that the synergetic interplay of topology, nonreciprocity and nonlinearity is capable of unprecedented effects. We focus on a nonreciprocal variant of the Su-Shrieffer-Heeger chain with local Kerr nonlinearity. We find a continuous family of non-reciprocal edge solitons (NESs) emerging from the topological edge mode, with near-zero energy, in great contrast from their reciprocal counterparts. Analytical results show that this energy decays exponen...

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in the study of wave propagation in nonlinear photonic lattices. The interplay between nonlinearity and periodicity has led researchers to manipulate light and discover new and interesting phenomena such as new classes of localized modes, usually referred to as solitons, and novel surface states that propagate robustly. A field where both nonlinearity and periodicity arises naturally is nonlinear optics. But there are othe...