Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Model Inspired Acoustic Interface States and Edge States

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates an acoustic analog of the SSH topological model, showing tunable topological phase transitions, the existence of interface and edge states, and their robustness, through experimental and numerical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a 1D acoustic system mimicking the SSH model, experimentally verifies topological phase transitions, and reveals robust edge states in the acoustic domain.

Findings

Topological phase transition observed via geometric Zak phase change.

Experimental measurement of topological interface states.

Robust edge states against defects and perturbations.

Abstract

If a full band gap closes and then reopens when we continuously deform a periodic system while keeping its symmetry, a topological phase transition usually occurs. A common model demonstrating such a topological phase transition in condensed matter physics is the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model. As well known, two distinct topological phases emerge when the intracell hopping is tuned from smaller to larger with respect to the intercell hopping in the model. The former case is topologically trivial, while the latter case is topologically non-trivial. Here, we design a 1D periodic acoustic system in exact analogy to the SSH model. The unit cell of the acoustic system is composed of two resonators and two junction tubes connecting them. We show that the topological phase transition happens in our acoustic analog when we tune the radii of the junction tubes which control the intercell and intracell hoppings. The topological phase transition is characterized by the abrupt change of the geometric Zak phase. The topological interface states between non-trivial and trivial phases of our acoustic analog are experimentally measured, and the results agree very well with the numerical values. Further, we show that topologically non-trivial phases of our acoustic analog of the SSH model can support edge states, on which the discussion is absent in previous works about topological acoustics. The edge states are robust against localized defects and perturbations.