Nonlinear topological photonics

Metasurfaces are subwavelength structured thin films consisting of arrays of units that allow the controls of polarization, phase and amplitude of light over a subwavelength thickness. The recent developments in topological photonics have greatly broadened the horizon in designing the metasurfaces for novel functional applications. In this review, we summarize recent progress in the research field of topological metasurfaces, firstly from the perspectives of passive and activ...

Topological photonics has attracted increasing attention in recent years due to the unique opportunities it provides to manipulate light in a robust way immune to disorder and defects. Up to now, diverse photonic platforms, rich physical mechanisms and fruitful device applications have been proposed for topological photonics, including one-way waveguide, topological lasing, topological nanocavity, Dirac and Weyl points, Fermi arcs, nodal lines, etc. In this review, we provide...

Topological photonics has emerged as a novel paradigm for the design of electromagnetic systems from microwaves to nanophotonics. Studies to date have largely focused on the demonstration of fundamental concepts, such as non-reciprocity and waveguiding protected against fabrication disorder. Moving forward, there is a pressing need to identify applications where topological designs can lead to useful improvements in device performance. Here we review applications of topologic...

Topological photonics started out as a pursuit to engineer systems that mimic fermionic single-particle Hamiltonians with symmetry-protected modes, whose number can only change in spectral phase transitions such as band inversions. The paradigm of topological lasing, realized in three recent experiments, offers entirely new interpretations of these states, as they can be selectively amplified by distributed gain and loss. A key question is whether such topological mode select...

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...

Higher-order topological insulators (HOTI) are a novel topological phase beyond the framework of the conventional bulk-boundary correspondence. In these peculiar systems, the topologically nontrivial boundary modes are characterized by a co-dimension of at least two. Despite several promising preliminary considerations regarding the impact of nonlinearity in such systems, the flourishing field of experimental HOTI research has thus far been confined to the linear evolution of...

Topological photonics has attracted widespread research attention in the past decade due to its fundamental interest and unique manner in controlling light propagation for advanced applications. Paradigmatic approaches have been proposed to achieve topological phases including topological insulators in a variety of photonic systems. In particular, photonic lattices composed of evanescently coupled waveguide arrays have been employed conveniently to explore and investigate top...

Topological photonics has recently emerged as a route to realize robust optical circuitry, and nonlinear effects are expected to enable tunability of topological states with the light intensity. Here we realize experimentally nonlinear self-induced spectral tuning of the electromagnetic topological edge states in an array of coupled nonlinear resonators in a pump-probe experiment. In a weakly nonlinear regime, we observe that resonators frequencies exhibit spectral shifts, th...

Topological features - global properties not discernible locally - emerge in systems from liquid crystals to magnets to fractional quantum Hall systems. Deeper understanding of the role of topology in physics has led to a new class of matter: topologically - ordered systems. The best known examples are quantum Hall effects, where insensitivity to local properties manifests itself as conductance through edge states that is insensitive to defects and disorder. Current research ...

Edge states emerge in diverse areas of science, offering new opportunities for the development of novel electronic or optoelectronic devices, sound and light propagation controls in acoustics and photonics. Previous experiments on edge states and exploration of topological phases in photonics were carried out mostly in linear regimes, but the current belief is that nonlinearity introduces new striking features into physics of edge states, lead-ing to the formation of edge sol...