Thouless pumping in disordered photonic systems

Cerjan, Alexander; Wang, Mohan; Huang, Sheng; Chen, Kevin P.; Rechtsman, Mikael C.

doi:10.1038/s41377-020-00408-2

Cited by 92 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Of particular interest is the topological pumping of light beams in periodically-modulated waveguide arrays 9 , 16 , 33 – 35 , which may find applications in quantum information processing, such as preparing entangled states of photons 36 , 37 and transferring quantum states 38 – 41 . The first topological pumping scheme is known as Thouless pumping 42 – 47 , and it was proposed and realized in photonic systems 48 – 51 , in which the light field fills uniformly a bulk band and transfers by integer unit cells.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric topological pumping in nonparaxial photonics

Cheng

Wang

et al. 2022

Nat Commun

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Topological photonics was initially inspired by the quantum-optical analogy between the Schrödinger equation for an electron wavefunction and the paraxial equation for a light beam. Here, we reveal an unexpected phenomenon in topological pumping observed in arrays of nonparaxial optical waveguides where the quantum-optical analogy becomes invalid. We predict theoretically and demonstrate experimentally an asymmetric topological pumping when the injected field transfers from one side of the waveguide array to the other side whereas the reverse process is unexpectedly forbidden. Our finding could open an avenue for exploring topological photonics that enables nontrivial topological phenomena and designs in photonics driven by nonparaxiality.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric topological pumping in nonparaxial photonics

Cheng

Wang

et al. 2022

Nat Commun

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“…Thouless pumps have been studied in various systems (see, for example, Refs. [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]). The inclusion of nonlinearity into Thouless pumps has recently led to the discovery of quantized pumping of solitons, where the displacement is dictated by the Chern number of the band from which they bifurcate, despite lacking the notion of a uniformly filled band [39].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantized Fractional Thouless Pumping of Solitons

Jürgensen¹,

Mukherjee²,

Jörg³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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In many contexts, the interaction between particles gives rise to emergent and perhaps unanticipated physical phenomena. An example is the fractional quantum Hall effect, where interaction between electrons gives rise to fractionally quantized Hall conductance. In photonic systems, the nonlinear response of an ambient medium acts to mediate interaction between photons; in the meanfield limit these dynamics are described by the nonlinear Schrödinger (also called Gross-Pitaevskii) equation. Recently, it was shown that at weak nonlinearity, soliton motion in nonlinear Thouless pumps (a dimensionally reduced implementation of a Chern insulator) could be quantized to the Chern number of the band from which the soliton bifurcates. Here, we show theoretically and experimentally using arrays of coupled optical waveguides that sufficiently strong nonlinearity acts to fractionally quantize the motion of solitons. Specifically, we find that the soliton returns to itself after multiple cycles of the Thouless pump -but displaced by an integer number of unit cellsleading to a rich fractional plateaux structure describing soliton motion. Our results demonstrate a perhaps surprising example of the behavior of non-trivial topological systems in the presence of interactions.

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“…For example, Thouless pumping protocols [14] can provide a route for edge to edge light transport even in one-dimensional systems [15,16], which happens to be robust against random defects. Within the context of photonics, such Thoulesse schemes have been recently demonstrated in 1D waveguide arrays [17][18][19]. Furthermore, the concept of Non-Abelian Thouless pumping in a photonic lattice has also been lately proposed [20].…”

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confidence: 99%

Optical Thouless pumping transport and nonlinear switching in a topological low-dimensional discrete nematic liquid crystal array

Jung,

Parto,

Pyrialakos

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We theoretically investigate a Thouless pumping scheme in the 1D topological Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model for single and multiple band-gaps systems when implemented in a discrete nematic liquid crystal arrangement. For an electrically controlled SSH waveguide array, we numerically demonstrate edge-to-edge light transport at low power levels. On the other hand, at higher powers, the transport is frustrated by light-induced nonlinear defect states, giving rise to robust all-optical switching.

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Thouless pumping in disordered photonic systems

Cited by 92 publications

References 45 publications

Asymmetric topological pumping in nonparaxial photonics

Asymmetric topological pumping in nonparaxial photonics

Quantized Fractional Thouless Pumping of Solitons

Optical Thouless pumping transport and nonlinear switching in a topological low-dimensional discrete nematic liquid crystal array

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