Polarization-Independent Second-Order Photonic Topological Corner States

Corner states of topological fullerenes

The unusual electronic properties of the quantum spin Hall or Chern insulator become manifest in the form of robust edge states when samples with boundaries are studied. In this work, we ask if and how the topologically nontrivial electronic structure of these two-dimensional systems can be passed on to their zero-dimensional relatives, namely, fullerenes or other closed-cage molecules. To addr...

Second-order polarization-mode dispersion in photonic crystal fibers

Topological states in photonic systems

Optics played a key role in the discovery of geometric phase. Once again, it joins the journey of exploring topological physics, bringing us bosonic topological states of one-way waveguides, Weyl points and a single surface Dirac cone. At the interfaces of topological photonic materials, the propagation of photons is protected against disorder by the momentum-space topologies in the bulk. Topol...

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 ...

Growing quantum states with topological order

We discuss a protocol for growing states with topological order in interacting many-body systems using a sequence of flux quanta and particle insertion. We first consider a simple toy model, the superlattice Bose-Hubbard model, to explain all required ingredients. Our protocol is then applied to fractional quantum Hall systems in both, continuum and lattice. We investigate in particular how the...