skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Experimental Observation of Large Chern Numbers in Photonic Crystals

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [1];  [1]
  1. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  2. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); NEC Corp., Tsukuba (Japan)
  3. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou (China).

Despite great interest in the quantum anomalous Hall phase and its analogs, all experimental studies in electronic and bosonic systems have been limited to a Chern number of one. In this work, we perform microwave transmission measurements in the bulk and at the edge of ferrimagnetic photonic crystals. Band gaps with large Chern numbers of 2, 3, and 4 are present in the experimental results, which show excellent agreement with theory. We calculate the mode profiles and Fourier transform them to produce dispersion relations of the edge modes, whose number and direction match our Chern number calculations.

Research Organization:
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0001299; FG02-09ER46577
OSTI ID:
1371456
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1229592
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 25; Related Information: S3TEC partners with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (lead); Boston College; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; ISSN 0031-9007
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 159 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (44)

Experimental Realization of Self-Guiding Unidirectional Electromagnetic Edge States journal March 2011
Unidirectional channel-drop filter by one-way gyromagnetic photonic crystal waveguides journal May 2011
New Method for High-Accuracy Determination of the Fine-Structure Constant Based on Quantized Hall Resistance journal August 1980
Quantum anomalous Hall effect with tunable Chern number in magnetic topological insulator film journal January 2012
Quantized Hall Conductance in a Two-Dimensional Periodic Potential journal August 1982
Tunable one-way cross-waveguide splitter based on gyromagnetic photonic crystal journal March 2010
Experimental Observation of the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in a Magnetic Topological Insulator journal March 2013
Topological States and Adiabatic Pumping in Quasicrystals journal September 2012
Photonic Floquet topological insulators journal April 2013
Multimode One-Way Waveguides of Large Chern Numbers journal September 2014
Topological Phononic Crystals with One-Way Elastic Edge Waves journal September 2015
Microwave Characterization of Partially Magnetized Ferrites journal June 1974
Experimental realization of photonic topological insulator in a uniaxial metacrystal waveguide journal December 2014
Topologically protected excitons in porphyrin thin films journal September 2014
Robust optical delay lines with topological protection journal August 2011
Large-Chern-Number Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Thin-Film Topological Crystalline Insulators journal January 2014
Edge states in topological magnon insulators journal July 2014
Realizing effective magnetic field for photons by controlling the phase of dynamic modulation journal October 2012
Experimental realization of the topological Haldane model with ultracold fermions journal November 2014
Photonic topological insulators journal December 2012
Model for a Quantum Hall Effect without Landau Levels: Condensed-Matter Realization of the "Parity Anomaly" journal October 1988
Chern Numbers in Discretized Brillouin Zone: Efficient Method of Computing (Spin) Hall Conductances journal June 2005
Topological photonics journal October 2014
Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect with Higher Plateaus journal September 2013
Topological Acoustics journal March 2015
Experimental demonstration of one-way slow wave in waveguide involving gyromagnetic photonic crystals journal June 2013
Chern number and edge states in the integer quantum Hall effect journal November 1993
Analogs of quantum-Hall-effect edge states in photonic crystals journal September 2008
Probing Electric Field in an Enclosed Field Mapper for Characterizing Metamaterials journal January 2014
Hierarchy of Floquet gaps and edge states for driven honeycomb lattices journal April 2015
Observation of unidirectional backscattering-immune topological electromagnetic states journal October 2009
Possible Realization of Directional Optical Waveguides in Photonic Crystals with Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry journal January 2008
Reflection-Free One-Way Edge Modes in a Gyromagnetic Photonic Crystal journal January 2008
Photonic Floquet topological insulators conference September 2013
Photonic Topological Insulators journal January 2013
Reflection-Free One-Way Edge Modes in a Gyromagnetic Photonic Crystal text January 2007
Robust optical delay lines via topological protection text January 2011
Quantum anomalous Hall effect with tunable Chern number in magnetic topological insulator film text January 2011
Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators text January 2012
Experimental realization of photonic topological insulator in a uniaxial metacrystal waveguide text January 2014
Topologically protected excitons in porphyrin thin films text January 2014
Experimental Observation of the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in a Magnetic Topological Insulator text January 2016
Chern Numbers in Discretized Brillouin Zone: Efficient Method of Computing (Spin) Hall Conductances text January 2005
Possible Realization of Directional Optical Waveguides in Photonic Crystals with Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry text January 2005

Cited By (58)

Applications of Topological Photonics in Integrated Photonic Devices journal August 2017
Thermo-optical Tunable Ultracompact Chip-Integrated 1D Photonic Topological Insulator journal December 2017
Topological phase transitions and Thouless pumping of light in photonic waveguide arrays: Topological phase transitions and Thouless pumping of light in photonic waveguide arrays journal October 2016
Experimental Realization of Multiple Topological Edge States in a 1D Photonic Lattice journal January 2019
Tutorial: Computing Topological Invariants in 2D Photonic Crystals journal October 2019
Topological photonic crystals: a review journal January 2020
Ultra-narrow unidirectional transmission filter assisted by topological interface state in one-dimensional photonic crystal heterostructure journal June 2019
Topological magnetoplasmon journal November 2016
Experimental observation of anomalous topological edge modes in a slowly driven photonic lattice journal January 2017
Crystalline metamaterials for topological properties at subwavelength scales journal July 2017
Symmetry-protected topological photonic crystal in three dimensions journal January 2016
Topological states in photonic systems journal June 2016
Experimental measurement of the Berry curvature from anomalous transport journal February 2017
Direct observation of valley-polarized topological edge states in designer surface plasmon crystals journal November 2017
Topological one-way fiber of second Chern number journal December 2018
Robust temporal pumping in a magneto-mechanical topological insulator journal February 2020
Two-dimensional topological photonics journal November 2017
Near-field imaging of spin-locked edge states in all-dielectric topological metasurfaces journal January 2019
Topologically-protected one-way leaky waves in nonreciprocal plasmonic structures journal February 2018
Nodal-line semimetal superlattices journal November 2018
Topological acoustic polaritons: robust sound manipulation at the subwavelength scale journal July 2017
One-way propagation of bulk states and robust edge states in photonic crystals with broken inversion and time-reversal symmetries journal June 2018
Interfacial waveforms in chiral lattices with gyroscopic spinners journal July 2018
Floquet engineering of exotic topological phases in systems of cold atoms journal August 2019
Higher winding number in a nonunitary photonic quantum walk journal December 2018
Topological Edge State in the Two-Dimensional Stampfli-Triangle Photonic Crystals journal October 2019
Towards large-Chern-number topological phases by periodic quenching journal May 2016
Topological phases in a Weyl semimetal multilayer journal April 2017
Recipe for creating an arbitrary number of Floquet chiral edge states journal June 2018
Symmetry protected topological phases characterized by isolated exceptional points journal April 2019
Revealing the Topology of Quasicrystals with a Diffraction Experiment journal November 2017
Space-time phononic crystals with anomalous topological edge states journal November 2019
Characterization of surface-states in a hollow core photonic crystal fiber journal January 2018
Polarization-resolved edge states in terahertz topological photonic crystal journal January 2019
Controlling interface states in 1D photonic crystals by tuning bulk geometric phases journal January 2017
Quantum anomalous Hall-quantum spin Hall effect in optical superlattices journal January 2018
Design of terahertz reconfigurable devices by locally controlling topological phases of square gyro-electric rod arrays journal January 2019
Strong magneto-optical response enabled by quantum two-level systems journal January 2018
Topologically protected broadband rerouting of propagating waves around complex objects journal May 2019
Robust Edge States in Amorphous Gyromagnetic Photonic Lattices conference January 2017
Model Fractional Chern Insulators text January 2015
Towards large-Chern-number topological phases by periodic quenching text January 2016
Topological Phase Transitions and Thouless Pumping of Light in Photonic Waveguide Arrays text January 2016
Measuring topological invariants from generalized edge states in polaritonic quasicrystals text January 2016
Bulk-edge correspondence for topological photonic continua text January 2016
Floquet Semimetal with Floquet-band Holonomy text January 2016
Experimental Measurement of the Berry Curvature from Anomalous Transport text January 2016
Controlling Interface States in 1D Photonic Crystals by tuning Bulk Geometric Phases text January 2016
Photonic Versus Electronic Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect text January 2017
Infrared Topological Plasmons in Graphene text January 2017
Direct Observation of Valley-polarized Topological Edge States in Designer Surface Plasmon Crystals text January 2017
Topological photonics: from crystals to particles text January 2017
Symmetry protected topological phases characterized by isolated exceptional points text January 2017
Recipe for creating an arbitrary number of Floquet chiral edge states text January 2018
Nodal-line semimetal superlattices text January 2018
Strong magneto-optical response enabled by quantum two level systems text January 2018
Floquet engineering to exotic topological phases in systems of cold atoms text January 2019
Space-Time Phononic Crystals with Anomalous Topological Edge States text January 2019

Figures / Tables (3)