Anomalous topological waves in strongly amorphous scattering networks.

Topological insulators are crystalline materials that have revolutionized our ability to control wave transport. They provide us with unidirectional channels that are immune to obstacles, defects, or local disorder and can even survive some random deformations of their crystalline structures. However, they always break down when the level of disorder or amorphism gets too large, transitioning to a topologically trivial Anderson insulating phase.

Non-Hermitian Spectral Flows and Berry-Chern Monopoles.

We propose a non-Hermitian generalization of the correspondence between the spectral flow and the topological charges of band crossing points (Berry-Chern monopoles). A class of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians that display a complex-valued spectral flow is built by deforming an Hermitian model while preserving its analytical index. We relate those spectral flows to a generalized Chern number that we show to be equal to that of the Hermitian case, provided a line gap exists.

Topological Properties of Floquet Winding Bands in a Photonic Lattice.

The engineering of synthetic materials characterized by more than one class of topological invariants is one of the current challenges of solid-state based and synthetic materials. Using a synthetic photonic lattice implemented in a two-coupled ring system we engineer an anomalous Floquet metal that is gapless in the bulk and shows simultaneously two different topological properties. On the one hand, this synthetic lattice presents bands characterized by a winding number.

Unidirectional Modes Induced by Nontraditional Coriolis Force in Stratified Fluids.

Using topology, we unveil the existence of new unidirectional modes in compressible rotating stratified fluids. We relate their emergence to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry by rotation and vertical mirror symmetry by stratification and gravity. We stress the role of the Coriolis force's nontraditional part, induced by a rotation field tangent to the surface.

Symmetry-Protected Multifold Exceptional Points and Their Topological Characterization.

We investigate the occurrence of n-fold exceptional points (EPs) in non-Hermitian systems, and show that they are stable in n-1 dimensions in the presence of antiunitary symmetries that are local in parameter space, such as, e.g., parity-time (PT) or charge-conjugation parity (CP) symmetries.

Superior robustness of anomalous non-reciprocal topological edge states.

Robustness against disorder and defects is a pivotal advantage of topological systems, manifested by the absence of electronic backscattering in the quantum-Hall and spin-Hall effects, and by unidirectional waveguiding in their classical analogues. Two-dimensional (2D) topological insulators, in particular, provide unprecedented opportunities in a variety of fields owing to their compact planar geometries, which are compatible with the fabrication technologies used in modern electronics and photonics. Among all 2D topological phases, Chern insulators are currently the most reliable designs owing to the genuine backscattering immunity of their non-reciprocal edge modes, brought via time-reversal symmetry breaking.

Wavefront dislocations reveal the topology of quasi-1D photonic insulators.

Phase singularities appear ubiquitously in wavefields, regardless of the wave equation. Such topological defects can lead to wavefront dislocations, as observed in a humongous number of classical wave experiments. Phase singularities of wave functions are also at the heart of the topological classification of the gapped phases of matter.

Topological origin of equatorial waves.

Topology sheds new light on the emergence of unidirectional edge waves in a variety of physical systems, from condensed matter to artificial lattices. Waves observed in geophysical flows are also robust to perturbations, which suggests a role for topology. We show a topological origin for two well-known equatorially trapped waves, the Kelvin and Yanai modes, owing to the breaking of time-reversal symmetry by Earth's rotation.

Topological index for periodically driven time-reversal invariant 2D systems.

We define a new Z2-valued index to characterize the topological properties of periodically driven two dimensional crystals when the time-reversal symmetry is enforced. This index is associated with a spectral gap of the evolution operator over one period of time. When two such gaps are present, the Kane-Mele index of the eigenstates with eigenvalues between the gaps is recovered as the difference of the gap indices.

Z2 peak of noise correlations in a quantum spin Hall insulator.

We investigate the current noise correlations at a quantum point contact in a quantum spin Hall structure, focusing on the effect of a weak magnetic field in the presence of disorder. For the case of two equally biased terminals we discover a robust peak: the noise correlations vanish at B = 0 and are negative for B ≠ 0. We find that the character of this peak is intimately related to the interplay between time reversal symmetry and the helical nature of the edge states and call it the Z2 peak.

Magnetic-field-induced localization in 2D topological insulators.

Localization of the helical edge states in quantum spin Hall insulators requires breaking time-reversal invariance. In experiments, this is naturally implemented by applying a weak magnetic field B. We propose a model based on scattering theory that describes the localization of helical edge states due to coupling to random magnetic fluxes.