No Arabic abstract
Recently, a new type of second-order topological insulator has been theoretically proposed by introducing an in-plane Zeeman field into the Kane-Mele model in the two-dimensional honeycomb lattice. A pair of topological corner states arise at the corners with obtuse angles of an isolated diamond-shaped flake. To probe the corner states, we study their transport properties by attaching two leads to the system. Dressed by incoming electrons, the dynamic corner state is very different from its static counterpart. Resonant tunneling through the dressed corner state can occur by tuning the in-plane Zeeman field. At the resonance, the pair of spatially well separated and highly localized corner states can form a dimer state, whose wavefunction extends almost the entire bulk of the diamond-shaped flake. By varying the Zeeman field strength, multiple resonant tunneling events are mediated by the same dimer state. This re-entrance effect can be understood by a simple model. These findings extend our understanding of dynamic aspects of the second-order topological corner states.
The concept of topological phases has been generalized to higher-order topological insulators and superconductors with novel boundary states on corners or hinges. Meanwhile, recent experimental advances in controlling dissipation (such as gain and loss) open new possibilities in studying non-Hermitian topological phases. Here, we show that higher-order topological corner states can emerge by simply introducing staggered on-site gain/loss to a Hermitian system in trivial phases. For such a non-Hermitian system, we establish a general bulk-corner correspondence by developing a biorthogonal nested-Wilson-loop and edge-polarization theory, which can be applied to a wide class of non-Hermitian systems with higher-order topological orders. The theory gives rise to topological invariants characterizing the non-Hermitian topological multipole moments (i.e., corner states) that are protected by reflection or chiral symmetry. Such gain/loss induced higher-order topological corner states can be experimentally realized using photons in coupled cavities or cold atoms in optical lattices.
We consider a system of weakly coupled Rashba nanowires in the strong spin-orbit interaction (SOI) regime. The nanowires are arranged into two tunnel-coupled layers proximitized by a top and bottom superconductor such that the superconducting phase difference between them is $pi$. We show that in such a system strong electron-electron interactions can stabilize a helical topological superconducting phase hosting Kramers partners of $mathbb{Z}_{2m}$ parafermion edge modes, where $m$ is an odd integer determined by the position of the chemical potential. Furthermore, upon turning on a weak in-plane magnetic field, the system is driven into a second-order topological superconducting phase hosting zero-energy $mathbb{Z}_{2m}$ parafermion bound states localized at two opposite corners of a rectangular sample. As a special case, zero-energy Majorana corner states emerge in the non-interacting limit $m=1$, where the chemical potential is tuned to the SOI energy of the single nanowires.
Photonic crystals have provided a controllable platform to examine excitingly new topological states in open systems. In this work, we reveal photonic topological corner states in a photonic graphene with mirror-symmetrically patterned gain and loss. Such a nontrivial Wannier-type higher-order topological phase is achieved through solely tuning on-site gain/loss strengths, which leads to annihilation of the two valley Dirac cones at a time-reversal-symmetric point, as the gain and loss change the effective tunneling between adjacent sites. We find that the symmetry-protected photonic corner modes exhibit purely imaginary energies and the role of the Wannier center as the topological invariant is illustrated. For experimental considerations, we also examine the topological interface states near a domain wall. Our work introduces an interesting platform for non-Hermiticity-induced photonic higher-order topological insulators, which, with current experimental technologies, can be readily accessed.
Topological photonics provides a new paradigm in studying cavity quantum electrodynamics with robustness to disorder. In this work, we demonstrate the coupling between single quantum dots and the second-order topological corner state. Based on the second-order topological corner state, a topological photonic crystal cavity is designed and fabricated into GaAs slabs with quantum dots embedded. The coexistence of corner state and edge state with high quality factor close to 2000 is observed. The enhancement of photoluminescence intensity and emission rate are both observed when the quantum dot is on resonance with the corner state. This result enables the application of topology into cavity quantum electrodynamics, offering an approach to topological devices for quantum information processing.
A two-dimensional second-order topological superconductor exhibits a finite gap in both bulk and edges, with the nontrivial topology manifesting itself through Majorana zero modes localized at the corners, i.e., Majorana corner states. We investigate a time-reversal-invariant topological superconductor in two dimension and demonstrate that an in-plane magnetic field could transform it into a second-order topological superconductor. A detailed analysis reveals that the magnetic field gives rise to mass terms which take distinct values among the edges, and Majorana corner states naturally emerge at the intersection of two adjacent edges with opposite masses. With the rotation of the magnetic field, Majorana corner states localized around the boundary may hop from one corner to a neighboring one and eventually make a full circle around the system when the field rotates by $2pi$. In the end we briefly discuss physical realizations of this system.