Over the past decade, topology has emerged as a major branch in broad areas of physics, from atomic lattices to condensed matter. In particular, topology has received significant attention in photonics because light waves can serve as a platform to investigate nontrivial bulk and edge physics with the aid of carefully engineered photonic crystals and metamaterials. Simultaneously, photonics provides enriched physics that arises from spin-1 vectorial electromagnetic fields. Here, we review recent progress in the growing field of topological photonics in three parts. The first part is dedicated to the basics of topological band theory and introduces various two-dimensional topological phases. The second part reviews three-dimensional topological phases and numerous approaches to achieve them in photonics. Last, we present recently emerging fields in topological photonics that have not yet been reviewed. This part includes topological degeneracies in nonzero dimensions, unidirectional Maxwellian spin waves, higher-order photonic topological phases, and stacking of photonic crystals to attain layer pseudospin. In addition to the various approaches for realizing photonic topological phases, we also discuss the interaction between light and topological matter and the efforts towards practical applications of topological photonics.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41377-020-0331-y | DOI Listing |
Nat Mater
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Photonic Structures (MOE), and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Polymorphism, commonly denoting diverse molecular or crystal structures, is crucial in the natural sciences. In van der Waals antiferromagnets, a new type of magnetic polymorphism arises, presenting multiple layer-selective magnetic structures with identical total magnetization. However, resolving and manipulating such magnetic polymorphs remain challenging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Extreme Photonics and Instrumentation, ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Adv Mater
January 2025
Liquid Crystals and Photonics Group, Department of Electronics and Information Systems, Ghent University, Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 126, Ghent, 9052, Belgium.
In liquid crystal (LC) cells, the surface patterning directs the self-assembly of the uniaxial building blocks in the bulk, enabling the design of stimuli-response optical devices with various functionalities. The combination of different anchoring patterns at both substrates can lead to surface induced frustration, preventing a purely planar and defect-free configuration. In cells with crossed assembly of rotating anchoring patterns, elastic deformations allow to obtain a defect-free bulk configuration, but an electrical stimulus can induce disclination lines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Photonics
October 2024
Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Centre Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications, Varennes, Quebec Canada.
Quantum walks on photonic platforms represent a physics-rich framework for quantum measurements, simulations and universal computing. Dynamic reconfigurability of photonic circuitry is key to controlling the walk and retrieving its full operation potential. Universal quantum processing schemes based on time-bin encoding in gated fibre loops have been proposed but not demonstrated yet, mainly due to gate inefficiencies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScience
January 2025
Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
Axions, hypothetical elementary particles that remain undetectable in nature, can arise as quasiparticles in three-dimensional crystals known as axion insulators. Previous implementations of axion insulators have largely been limited to two-dimensional systems, leaving their topological properties in three dimensions unexplored in experiment. Here, we realize an axion insulator in a three-dimensional photonic crystal and probe its topological properties.
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