No Arabic abstract
Recently realized higher order topological insulators have taken a surge of interest among the theoretical and experimental condensed matter community. The two-dimensional second order topological insulators give rise to zero-dimensional localized corner modes that reside within the band gap of the system along with edge modes that inhabit a band edge next to bulk modes. Thanks to the topological nature, information can be trapped at the corners of these systems, which will be unhampered even in the presence of disorder. Being localized at the corners, the exchange of information among the corner states is an issue. Here we show that the nonlinearity in an exciton polariton system can allow the coupling between the different corners through the edge states based on optical parametric scattering, realizing a system of multiple connectible topological modes.
We present a scheme to obtain anti-chiral edge states in an exciton-polariton honeycomb lattice with strip geometry, where the modes corresponding to both edges propagate in the same direction. Under resonant pumping the effect of a polariton condensate with nonzero velocity in one linear polarization is predicted to tilt the dispersion of polaritons in the other, which results in an energy shift between two Dirac cones and the otherwise flat edge states become tilted. Our simulations show that due to the spatial separation from the bulk modes the edge modes are robust against disorder.
Topologically protected gapless edge states are phases of quantum matter which behave as massless Dirac fermions, immunizing against disorders and continuous perturbations. Recently, a new class of topological insulators (TIs) with topological corner states have been theoretically predicted in electric systems, and experimentally realized in two-dimensional (2D) mechanical and electromagnetic systems, electrical circuits, optical and sonic crystals, and elastic phononic plates. Here, we demonstrate a pseudospin-valley-coupled phononic TI, which simultaneously exhibits gapped edge states and topological corner states. Pseudospin-orbit coupling edge states and valley-polarized edge state are respectively induced by the lattice deformation and the symmetry breaking. When both of them coexist, these topological edge states will be greatly gapped and the topological corner state emerges. Under direct field measurements, the robust edge propagation behaving as an elastic waveguide and the topological corner mode working as a robust localized resonance are experimentally confirmed. The pseudospin-valley coupling in our phononic TIs can be well-controlled which provides a reconfigurable platform for the multiple edge and corner states, and exhibits well applications in the topological elastic energy recovery and the highly sensitive sensing.
We present a scheme of interaction-induced topological bandstructures based on the spin anisotropy of exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. We predict theoretically that this scheme allows the engineering of topological gaps, without requiring a magnetic field or strong spin-orbit interaction (transverse electric-transverse magnetic splitting). Under non-resonant pumping, we find that an initially topologically trivial system undergoes a topological transition upon the spontaneous breaking of phase symmetry associated with polariton condensation. Under resonant coherent pumping, we find that it is also possible to engineer a topological dispersion that is linear in wavevector -- a property associated with polariton superfluidity.
In this work, we study the near-field heat transfer between composite nanostructures. It is demonstrated that thermally excited surface plasmon polaritons, surface phonon polaritons, and hyperbolic phonon polaritons in such composite nanostructures significantly enhance the near-field heat transfer. To further analyze the underlying mechanisms, we calculate energy transmission coefficients and obtain the near-field dispersion relations. The dispersion relations of composite nanostructures are substantially different from those of isolated graphene, silicon carbide (SiC) films, and SiC nanowire arrays due to the strong coupling effects among surface polaritonic modes. We identify four pairs of strongly coupled polaritonic modes with considerable Rabi frequencies in graphene/SiC film composite structures that greatly broaden the spectral peak. We confirm that near-field strong coupling effects between surface plasmon polaritons and hyperbolic phonon polaritons in the in-plane Reststrahlen band are different from those in the out-of-plane Reststrahlen band due to the different types of hyperbolicity. In addition, we analyze the effective tunability of the near-field heat transfer of graphene/SiC nanowire arrays composite structures by adjusting the chemical potential of graphene, the height and volume filling factor of the SiC nanowire arrays. This work provides a method to manipulate the near-field heat transfer with the use of strongly coupled surface polaritonic modes.
SnTe materials are one of the most flexible material platforms for exploring the interplay of topology and different types of symmetry breaking. We study symmetry-protected topological states in SnTe nanowires in the presence of various combinations of Zeeman field, s-wave superconductivity and inversion-symmetry-breaking field. We uncover the origin of robust corner states and hinge states in the normal state. In the presence of superconductivity, we find inversion-symmetry-protected gapless bulk Majorana modes, which give rise to quantized thermal conductance in ballistic wires. By introducing an inversion-symmetry-breaking field, the bulk Majorana modes become gapped and topologically protected localized Majorana zero modes appear at the ends of the wire.