Definite photon deflections of topological defects in metasurfaces and symmetry-breaking phase transitions with material loss

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the experimental emulation of spacetime topological defects using a waveguide with metasurfaces, revealing robust photon deflections unaffected by incident photon properties, and explores the effects of material loss on these topological phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optical platform to emulate spacetime topological defects and investigates the impact of material loss on topological photon deflections.

Findings

Photon deflection angle is robust and independent of incident photon properties.

Material loss influences the symmetry breaking of photonic modes.

The platform enables exploration of topological gravity in optical systems.

Abstract

Combination of topology and general relativity can lead to some profound and farsighted predictions. It is well known that symmetry breaking of the Higgs vacuum field in the early universe possibly induced topological defects in spacetime, whose nontrivial effects can provide some clues about the universe's origin. Here, by using an artificial waveguide bounded with rotational metasurface, the nontrivial effects of a topological defect of spacetime are experimentally emulated. The photon deflection in the topological waveguide has a robust definite angle that does not depend on the location and momentum of incident photons. This is remarkably different from the random optical scattering in trivial space. By including material loss such a topological effect can be well understood from the symmetry breaking of photonic modes. Our technique provides a platform to investigate topological gravity in optical systems. This method can also be extended to obtain many other novel topological photonic devices.