Simulation and Detection of Photonic Chern Insulators in One-Dimensional Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics Lattice

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to realize and detect photonic Chern insulators in one-dimensional circuit QED arrays by periodic modulation, enabling experimental study of topological properties and edge states.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to simulate 2D topological insulators in 1D systems using periodic modulation, facilitating experimental detection of topological invariants.

Findings

Photonic edge states can be directly probed.

Topological invariants can be detected via reflection phase winding.

The method enables realization of Laughlin's pumping in circuit QED.

Abstract

We introduce a simple method to realize and detect photonic topological Chern insulators with one-dimensional circiut quantum electrodynamics arrays. By periodically modulating the couplings of the array, we show that this one-dimensional model can be mapped into a two-dimensional Chern insulator model. In addition to allowing the study of photonic Chern insulators, this approach also provides a natural platform to realise experimentally Laughlin's pumping argument. Based on scattering theory of topological insulators and input-output formalism, we show that the photonic edge state can be probed directly and the topological invariant can be detected from the winding number of the reflection coefficient phase.