SKM 2021 – scientific programme
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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik
HL 22: Focus Session: Emerging Semiconductor Laser Concepts
HL 22.4: Invited Talk
Friday, October 1, 2021, 11:45–12:15, H4
Topological Insulator Lasers — •Miguel A. Bandres1, Steffen Wittek1, Gal Harari2, Mordechai Segev2, Demetrios N. Christodoulides1, and Mercedeh Khajavikhan3 — 1CREOL, University of Central Florida — 2Technion, Haifa, Israel — 3University of Southern California
Topological insulators are a new phase of matter with insulating bulk but robust edge conductance. These topological edge states are extremely robust, propagate in a unidirectional manner immune to imperfections, defects, or disorder, and as such they are promising unprecedented advantages in technological applications. In recent years, research in topological photonics has flourished with numerous photonic platforms. Until recently research on topological systems in all fields of science was carried out in entirely passive and linear settings. However, the idea of introducing gain and nonlinearity to topological systems has raised many challenges and fundamental questions.
Recently, we demonstrated that topological protection can be combined with gain and loss to give rise to a new kind of laser whose lasing mode is a topologically protected edge mode, a topological insulator laser. The topological insulator laser displays slope efficiency that is considerably higher than in the corresponding trivial realizations even in the presence of defects and disorder, and operates at a single lasing mode even considerably above threshold. These results paved the way towards the new era of active topological photonics, in which topological protection, nonlinearity, and gain, combined in nontrivial ways, to give rise to new active photonic devises.