No Arabic abstract
Matter in nontrivial topological phase possesses unique properties, such as support of unidirectional edge modes on its interface. It is the existence of such modes which is responsible for the wonderful properties of a topological insulator -- material which is insulating in the bulk but conducting on its surface, along with many of its recently proposed photonic and polaritonic analogues. We show that exciton-polariton fluid in a nontrivial topological phase in kagome lattice, supports nonlinear excitations in the form of solitons built up from wavepackets of topological edge modes -- topological edge solitons. Our theoretical and numerical results indicate the appearance of bright, dark and grey solitons dwelling in the vicinity of the boundary of a lattice strip. In a parabolic region of the dispersion the solitons can be described by envelope functions satisfying the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Upon collision, multiple topological edge solitons emerge undistorted, which proves them to be true solitons as opposed to solitary waves for which such requirement is waived. Importantly, kagome lattice supports topological edge mode with zero group velocity unlike other types of truncated lattices. This gives a finer control over soliton velocity which can take both positive and negative values depending on the choice of forming it topological edge modes.
We study discrete nonlinear edge excitations of polaritonic kagome lattice. We show that when nontrivial topological phase of polaritons is realized, the kagome lattice permits propagation of bright solitons formed from topological edge states.
Topology describes properties that remain unaffected by smooth distortions. Its main hallmark is the emergence of edge states localized at the boundary between regions characterized by distinct topological invariants. This feature offers new opportunities for robust trapping of light in nano- and micro-meter scale systems subject to fabrication imperfections and to environmentally induced deformations. Here we show lasing in such topological edge states of a one-dimensional lattice of polariton micropillars that implements an orbital version of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian. We further demonstrate that lasing in these states persists under local deformations of the lattice. These results open the way to the implementation of chiral lasers in systems with broken time-reversal symmetry and, when combined with polariton interactions, to the study of nonlinear topological photonics.
We study a system of microcavity pillars arranged into a kagome lattice. We show that polarization-dependent tunnel coupling of microcavity pillars leads to the emergence of the effective spin-orbit interaction consisting of the Dresselhaus and Rashba terms, similar to the case of polaritonic graphene studied earlier. Appearance of the effective spin-orbit interaction combined with the time-reversal symmetry-breaking resulting from the application of the magnetic field leads to the nontrivial topological properties of the Bloch bundles of polaritonic wavefunction. These are manifested in opening of the gap in the band structure and topological edge states localized on the boundary. Such states are analogs of the edge states arising in topological insulators. Our study of polarization properties of the edge states clearly demonstrate that opening of the gap is associated with the band inversion in the region of the Dirac points of the Brillouin zone where the two bands corresponding to polaritons of opposite polarizations meet. For one particular type of boundary we observe a highly nonlinear energy dispersion of the edge state which makes polaritonic kagome lattice a promising system for observation of edge state solitons.
We present a systematic investigation of two-photon excitation processes in a GaAs-based microcavity in the strong-coupling regime. We observe second harmonic generation resonant to the upper and lower polariton level, which exhibits a strong dependence on the photonic fraction of the corresponding polariton. In addition we have performed two-photon excitation spectroscopy to identify $2p$ exciton states which are crucial for the operation as a terahertz lasing device, which was suggested recently [A. V. Kavokin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. textbf{108}, 197401 (2012)]. However, no distinct signatures of a $2p$ exciton state could be identified, which indicates a low two-photon pumping efficiency.
We study the nonlinear thermoelectric cooling performance of a quantum spin Hall system. The setup consists of a nanomagnet contacting a Kramers pair of helical edge states, resulting in a transmission probability with a rich structure containing peaks, well-type, and step-type features. We present a detailed analysis of the impact of all these features on the cooling performance, based to a large extent on analytical results. We analyze the cooling power as well as the coefficient of performance of the device. Since the basic features we study may be present in the transmission function of other mesoscopic conductors, our conclusions provide useful insights to analyze the nonlinear thermoelectric behavior of a wide class of quantum devices. The combination of all these properties define the response of the quantum spin Hall setup, for which we provide some realistic estimates for the conditions limiting and optimizing its operation as a cooling device.