2022/02/07 by Francesco S. Piccioli, Mark Kremer, Piccioli, Francesco S. +13
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Memory and Neural Computing #Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #Random lasers and scattering media #Topological Materials and Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2202.03252
openalex publication_date 2022/02/07 · openalex created_date 2022/04/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Topological insulators enable non-reciprocal light propagation that is insensitive to disorder and imperfections. Yet, despite considerable attention from the photonics community and beyond, the very feature that has inspired numerous proposals for applications of topological transport also turns out to be one of the main stumbling blocks for practical implementations: Accessing topologically protected states is generally assumed to require their protection to be lifted. We overcome this limitation by topology-entailed trivial (TET) states that arise from the hybridization of counter-propagating interface states. We demonstrate selective injection and extraction of light into topological states as well as long-range coherent light exchange between spatially separated topological channels. Our results highlight the potential of TET states as protection-preserving paradigm to manipulate the flow of light in topological platforms.