2017/05/19 by Xin Zhou, You Wang, Daniel Leykam +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Classification of discontinuities #Discontinuity (linguistics) #Lattice (music) #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #Nonlinear system #Optical isolator #Photonics #Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topology (electrical circuits) #Waveguide #cond-mat.mes-hall #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/aa7cb5
published as N. J. Phys. 19, 095002 (2017) · 11 pages, 7 figures
arxiv created 2017/05/19 · openalex created_date 2017/06/05 · openalex publication_date 2017/09/08 · arxiv updated 2017/09/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
It is shown that the concept of topological phase transitions can be used to design nonlinear photonic structures exhibiting power thresholds and discontinuities in their transmittance. This provides a novel route to devising nonlinear optical isolators. We study three representative designs: (i) a waveguide array implementing a nonlinear 1D Su–Schrieffer–Heeger model, (ii) a waveguide array implementing a nonlinear 2D Haldane model, and (iii) a 2D lattice of coupled-ring waveguides. In the first two cases, we find a correspondence between the topological transition of the underlying linear lattice and the power threshold of the transmittance, and show that the transmission behavior is attributable to the emergence of a self-induced topological soliton. In the third case, we show that the topological transition produces a discontinuity in the transmittance curve, which can be exploited to achieve sharp jumps in the power-dependent isolation ratio.