Rostock 2019 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 8: Quantum Optics and Photonics I

Q 8.2: Vortrag

Montag, 11. März 2019, 10:45–11:00, S Ex 04 E-Tech

Realization of a non-quantized topological insulator using photonic Aharonov-Bohm cages — •Mark Kremer¹, Ioannis Petrides², Eric Meyer¹, Matthias Heinrich¹, Oded Zilberberg², and Alexander Szameit¹ — ¹Institut für Physik, Universität Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Straße 23, 18059 Rostock, Germany — ²Institut für Theoretische Physik, ETH Zürich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Straße 27, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland

The discovery of topological insulators opened up a new realm of physics with numerous enthralling effects. This new state of matter is fully characterised by topological invariants, which in turn can be deduced solely from bulk properties. Nevertheless, they allow predictions about boundary modes and their robustness. In our work, we extend the perception of such systems by introducing topological insulators with non-quantized topological invariants. Moreover, the quantization only reveals itself upon squaring the Hamilton operator. To this end, we study a quasi-one-dimensional chain of so-called Aharonov-Bohm cages, which are known to support robust edge states. By squaring the Hamiltonian, we find a SSH-type model to be the topological origin of the robustness. Experimentally, we use the femtosecond laser writing technique to create waveguide arrays as versatile platform for probing topological effects. In this vein, we combine bulk dynamics with observations of localised edge modes to confirm our theoretical findings.