Valley controlled propagation of pseudospin states in bulk metacrystal waveguides

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the control of pseudospin state propagation in three-dimensional bulk metacrystal waveguides using valley degrees of freedom, enabling reconfigurable and boundary-free photonic transport.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to realize valley-dependent pseudospin bands in bulk metacrystal waveguides without Dirac cones, expanding photonic control techniques.

Findings

Valley-dependent pseudospin bands achieved in 3D metacrystal waveguides.

Reconfigurable photonic valley Hall effect proposed.

Prototype of photonic blocker demonstrated.

Abstract

Light manipulations such as spin-direction locking propagation, robust transport, quantum teleportation and reconfigurable electromagnetic pathways have been investigated at the boundaries of photonic systems. Recently by breaking Dirac cones in time-reversal invariant photonic crystals, valley-pseudospin coupled edge states have been employed to realize selective propagation of light. Here, without photonic boundaries, we realize the propagation of pseudospin states in three-dimensional bulk metacrystal waveguides by employing the ubiquitous valley degree of freedom. Valley-dependent pseudospin bands are achieved in three-dimensional metacrystal waveguides without Dirac cones. Reconfigurable photonic valley Hall effect is proposed after studying the variation of pseudospin states near K' and K valleys. Moreover, a prototype of photonic blocker is realized by cascading two inversion asymmetric metacrystal waveguides in which the pseudospin direction locking propagation exists. In addition, valley-dependent pseudospin bands are also discussed in a realistic metamaterials sample. These results show an alternative way towards molding the pseudospin flow in photonic systems.