Photonic topological insulators

Self-localized states in photonic topological insulators.

We propose solitons in a photonic topological insulator: self-localized wave packets forming topological edge states residing in the bulk of a nonlinear photonic topological insulator. These self-forming entities exhibit, despite being in the bulk, the property of unidirectional transport, similar to the transport their linear counterparts display on the edge of a topological insulator. In the ...

Observation of photonic anomalous Floquet topological insulators

Topological insulators are a new class of materials that exhibit robust and scatter-free transport along their edges - independently of the fine details of the system and of the edge - due to topological protection. To classify the topological character of two-dimensional systems without additional symmetries, one commonly uses Chern numbers, as their sum computed from all bands below a specifi...

Topological insulators

Anomalous Topological Phases and Unpaired Dirac Cones in Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators.

We propose a class of photonic Floquet topological insulators based on staggered helical lattices and an efficient numerical method for calculating their Floquet band structure. The lattices support anomalous Floquet topological insulator phases with vanishing Chern number and tunable topological transitions. At the critical point of the topological transition, the band structure hosts a single...

Topological crystalline insulators.

The recent discovery of topological insulators has revived interest in the band topology of insulators. In this Letter, we extend the topological classification of band structures to include certain crystal point group symmetry. We find a class of three-dimensional "topological crystalline insulators" which have metallic surface states with quadratic band degeneracy on high symmetry crystal sur...