2016/08/31 by Tetsuyuki Ochiai
Physics and Astronomy · #Degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry) #Field (mathematics) #Gapless playback #Gauge (firearms) #Gauge theory #Lattice (music) #Magnetic field #Mixing (physics) #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1361-648x/29/4/045501
published as J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 29, 045501 (2017) · added Fig. 8, some explanations and figures
openalex created_date 2016/08/23 · openalex publication_date 2016/11/29 · arxiv created 2016/12/22 · arxiv updated 2016/12/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the effects of a synthetic gauge field and pseudospin-orbit interaction in a stacked two-dimensional ring-network model. The model was introduced to simulate light propagation in the corresponding ring-resonator lattice, and is thus completely bosonic. Without these two items, the model exhibits Floquet-Weyl and Floquet-topological-insulator phases with topologically gapless and gapped band structures, respectively. The synthetic magnetic field implemented in the model results in a three-dimensional Hofstadter-butterfly-type spectrum in a photonic platform. The resulting gaps are characterized by the winding number of relevant S-matrices together with the Chern number of the bulk bands. The pseudospin-orbit interaction is defined as the mixing term between two pseudospin degrees of freedom in the rings, namely, the clockwise and counter-clockwise modes. It destroys the Floquet-topological-insulator phases, while the Floquet-Weyl phase with multiple Weyl points can be preserved by breaking the space-inversion symmetry. Implementing both the synthetic gauge field and pseudospin-orbit interaction requires a certain nonreciprocity.