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Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing

Topological protection in photonics offers new prospects for guiding and manipulating classical and quantum information. The mechanism of spin-orbit coupling promises the emergence of edge states that are helical, exhibiting unidirectional propagation that is topologically protected against back sca...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Parappurath, Nikhil, Alpeggiani, Filippo, Kuipers, L., Verhagen, Ewold
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075695/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32206704
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw4137
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author Parappurath, Nikhil
Alpeggiani, Filippo
Kuipers, L.
Verhagen, Ewold
author_facet Parappurath, Nikhil
Alpeggiani, Filippo
Kuipers, L.
Verhagen, Ewold
author_sort Parappurath, Nikhil
collection PubMed
description Topological protection in photonics offers new prospects for guiding and manipulating classical and quantum information. The mechanism of spin-orbit coupling promises the emergence of edge states that are helical, exhibiting unidirectional propagation that is topologically protected against back scattering. We directly observe the topological states of a photonic analog of electronic materials exhibiting the quantum spin Hall effect, living at the interface between two silicon photonic crystals with different topological order. Through the far-field radiation that is inherent to the states’ existence, we characterize their properties, including linear dispersion and low loss. We find that the edge state pseudospin is encoded in unique circular far-field polarization and linked to unidirectional propagation, thus revealing a signature of the underlying photonic spin-orbit coupling. We use this connection to selectively excite different edge states with polarized light and directly visualize their routing along sharp chiral waveguide junctions.
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spelling pubmed-70756952020-03-23 Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing Parappurath, Nikhil Alpeggiani, Filippo Kuipers, L. Verhagen, Ewold Sci Adv Research Articles Topological protection in photonics offers new prospects for guiding and manipulating classical and quantum information. The mechanism of spin-orbit coupling promises the emergence of edge states that are helical, exhibiting unidirectional propagation that is topologically protected against back scattering. We directly observe the topological states of a photonic analog of electronic materials exhibiting the quantum spin Hall effect, living at the interface between two silicon photonic crystals with different topological order. Through the far-field radiation that is inherent to the states’ existence, we characterize their properties, including linear dispersion and low loss. We find that the edge state pseudospin is encoded in unique circular far-field polarization and linked to unidirectional propagation, thus revealing a signature of the underlying photonic spin-orbit coupling. We use this connection to selectively excite different edge states with polarized light and directly visualize their routing along sharp chiral waveguide junctions. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7075695/ /pubmed/32206704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw4137 Text en Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Parappurath, Nikhil
Alpeggiani, Filippo
Kuipers, L.
Verhagen, Ewold
Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing
title Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing
title_full Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing
title_fullStr Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing
title_full_unstemmed Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing
title_short Direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: Spin, dispersion, and chiral routing
title_sort direct observation of topological edge states in silicon photonic crystals: spin, dispersion, and chiral routing
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075695/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32206704
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw4137
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