The concept of gauge field is a cornerstone of modern physics and the synthetic gauge field has emerged as a new way to manipulate particles in many disciplines. In optics, several schemes of Abelian synthetic gauge fields have been proposed. Here, we introduce a new platform for realizing synthetic SU(2) non-Abelian gauge fields acting on two-dimensional optical waves in a wide class of anisotropic materials and discover novel phenomena. We show that a virtual non-Abelian Lorentz force arising from material anisotropy can induce light beams to travel along Zitterbewegung trajectories even in homogeneous media. We further design an optical non-Abelian Aharonov–Bohm system which results in the exotic spin density interference effect. We can extract the Wilson loop of an arbitrary closed optical path from a series of gauge fixed points in the interference fringes. Our scheme offers a new route to study SU(2) gauge field related physics using optics.
It was recently demonstrated that the connectivities of bands emerging from zero frequency in dielectric photonic crystals are distinct from their electronic counterparts with the same space groups. We discover that in an AB-layer-stacked photonic crystal composed of anisotropic dielectrics, the unique photonic band connectivity leads to a new kind of symmetry-enforced triply degenerate points at the nexuses of two nodal rings and a Kramers-like nodal line. The emergence and intersection of the line nodes are guaranteed by a generalized 1/4-period screw rotation symmetry of Maxwell’s equations. The bands with a constant kz and iso-frequency surfaces near a nexus point both disperse as a spin-1 Dirac-like cone, giving rise to exotic transport features of light at the nexus point. We show that spin-1 conical diffraction occurs at the nexus point, which can be used to manipulate the charges of optical vortices. Our work reveals that Maxwell’s equations can have hidden symmetries induced by the fractional periodicity of the material tensor components and hence paves the way to finding novel topological nodal structures unique to photonic systems.
The scattering and resonant properties of optical scatterers/resonators are determined by the relative ratios among the associated multipole components, the calculation of which usually is analytically tedious and numerically complicated for complex structures. Here we identify the constraints as well as the relative relations among electromagnetic multipoles for the eigenmodes of symmetric scatterers/resonators. By reducing the symmetry properties of the vector spherical harmonic waves to those of the modified generating functions, we systematically study the required conditions for electromagnetic multipoles under several fundamental symmetry operations, i.e., 2D rotation and reflection operations and 3D proper and improper rotations. Taking a 2D scatterer with C4v as an example, we show that each irreducible representation of C4v can be assigned to corresponding electromagnetic multipoles, and consequently the constraints of the electromagnetic multipoles can be easily extracted. Such group approach can easily be extended to more complex 3D scatterers with higher symmetry group. Subsequently, we use the same procedure to map out the complete relation and constraint on the electromagnetic multipoles of a 3D scatterer imposed by D3h symmetry. Our theoretical analyses are in perfect agreements with the fullwave finite element calculations of the eigenmodes of the symmetric scatters.
Active optical systems can give rise to intriguing phenomena and applications that are not available in conventional passive systems. Structural rotation has been widely employed to achieve non-reciprocity or time-reversal symmetry breaking. Here, we examine the quasi-normal modes and scattering properties of a two-dimensional cylindrical cavity under rotation. In addition to the familiar phenomenon of Sagnac frequency shift, we observe the the hybridization of the clockwise(CW) and counter-clockwise(CCW) chiral modes of the cavity controlled by the rotation. The rotation tends to suppress one chiral mode while amplify the other, and it leads to the variation of the far field. The phenomenon can be understood as the result of a synthetic gauge field induced by the rotation of the cylinder. We explicitly derived this gauge field and the resulting Sagnac frequency shift. The analytical results are corroborated by finite element simulations. Our results can be applied in the measurement of rotating devices by probing the far field.
Scattering immune propagation of light in topological photonic systems may revolutionarize the design of integrated photonic circuits for information processing and communications. In optics, various photonic topological circuits have been developed, which were based on classical emulation of either quantum spin Hall effect or quantum valley Hall effect. On the other hand, the combination of both the valley and spin degrees of freedom can lead to a new kind of topological transport phenomenon, dubbed quantum spin valley Hall effect (QSVH), which can further expand the number of topologically protected edge channels and would be useful for information multiplexing. However, it is challenging to realize QSVH in most known material platforms, due to the requirement of breaking both the (pseudo-)fermionic time-reversal ( ) and parity symmetries ( ) individually, but leaving the combined symmetry intact. Here, we propose an experimentally feasible platform to realize QSVH for light, based on coupled ring resonators mediated by optical Kerr nonlinearity. Thanks to the inherent flexibility of cross-mode modulation (XMM), the coupling between the probe light can be engineered in a controllable way such that spin-dependent staggered sublattice potential emerges in the effective Hamiltonian. With delicate yet experimentally feasible pump conditions, we show the existence of spin valley Hall induced topological edge states. We further demonstrate that both degrees of freedom, i.e., spin and valley, can be manipulated simultaneously in a reconfigurable manner to realize spin-valley photonics, doubling the degrees of freedom for enhancing the information capacity in optical communication systems.
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