Topological funneling of light

By S. Weidemann, M. Kremer, T. Helbig, T. Hofmann, Alexander Stegmaier, M. Greiter, R. Thomale, Alexander Szameit. Science, 2020

745 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A topological light funnel Because most physical systems cannot be totally isolated from their environment, some degree of dissipation or loss is expected. The successful operation of such systems generally relies on mitigating for that loss. Mathematically, such external interactions are described as non-Hermitian. Recent work has shown that controlling the gain and loss in these systems gives rise to a wide variety of exotic phenomena not expected for their isolated Hermitian counterparts. Using a time-dependent photonic lattice in which the topological properties can be controlled, Weidemann et al. show that such a structure can efficiently funnel light to the interface irrespective of the point of incidence on the lattice. Such control of the topological properties could be useful for nanophotonic applications in integrated optical chip platforms. Science, this issue p. 311 The topological properties of a photonic crystal can be used to efficiently funnel light. Dissipation is a general feature of non-Hermitian systems. But rather than being an unavoidable nuisance, non-Hermiticity can be precisely controlled and hence used for sophisticated applications, such as optical sensors with enhanced sensitivity. In our work, we implement a non-Hermitian photonic mesh lattice by tailoring the anisotropy of the nearest-neighbor coupling. The appearance of an interface results in a complete collapse of the entire eigenmode spectrum, leading to an exponential localization of all modes at the interface. As a consequence, any light field within the lattice travels toward this interface, irrespective of its shape and input position. On the basis of this topological phenomenon, called the “non-Hermitian skin effect,” we demonstrate a highly efficient funnel for light.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/003fd2b5021af20677c403b4c8727036fbd922ad

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. K. Kawabata
2. Andrea Alù
3. T. Ozawa
4. H. Price
5. A. Amo
6. Alexander B. Khanikaev
7. Baile Zhang
8. I. Carusotto

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. K. Kawabata
2. Andrea Alù
3. Tokiro Numasawa
4. S. Ryu
5. A. Amo
6. Shanhui Fan
7. V. Vitelli
8. Alexander Szameit

Citations in the corpus

• Entanglement Phase Transition Induced by the Non-Hermitian Skin Effect (2022, background): “The skin effect has recently been observed in classical experiments of mechanical metamaterials [123], electrical circuits [124, 125], photonic lattices [126], and active particles [127], as well as quantum experiments of single photons [128] and ultracold atoms [129].”
• Exceptional topology of non-Hermitian systems (2019, neutral): “…confined to the lower complex half plane, a global shift can make the system effectively PT symmetric in a description, where the less lossy waveguides thus effectively experience gain (Guo et al. , 2009; Feng et al. , 2013; Ornigotti and Szameit, 2014; Weimann et al. , 2017; Kremer et al. , 2019).”
• Higher-order non-Hermitian skin effect (2020, neutral): “[112] S.”
• Topological dissipation in a time-multiplexed photonic resonator network (2021, neutral): “Although previous studies have realized time-multiplexed random walks in synthetic photonic lattices 26,31–33 , these travelling-wave architectures relied on conservatively coupled fibre loops and functioned like real-space waveguide arrays.”
• Topological active matter (2020, background): “[191] Weidemann, S.”
• Roadmap on topological photonics (2022, positive): “The topological light funnel [83], for instance, uses the non-Hermitian skin effect to accumulate a collective bulk signal at the boundary (figure 10).”