Topological pumping in photonic systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that non-Hermitian photonic waveguides with a single real-space periodicity can exhibit nontrivial topological properties akin to higher-dimensional systems, revealing new boundary states and complex band connections.

Contribution

It introduces a framework linking 1D non-Hermitian photonic waveguides to extended systems with synthetic dimensions and nontrivial Chern topology, revealing novel topological boundary phenomena.

Findings

Number of bands below a gap determines the gap Chern number.

Gap Chern number correlates with the number of Tamm state branches.

Tamm states connect different bands in the complex plane in non-Hermitian systems.

Abstract

The topology of typical Chern insulators is rooted in the periodicity of the system along two directions of real-space. In this article, we depart from this standard concept and demonstrate that a generic non-Hermitian photonic waveguide periodic along a single direction of real space can be regarded as a sub-component of an extended system with a synthetic dimension and with a nontrivial Chern topology. In particular, we show that the number of bands below a band-gap of a generic waveguide determines the gap Chern number of the extended system. It is theoretically and numerically demonstrated that in real-space the gap Chern number gives the number of gapless Tamm state branches localized at the system boundary, when its geometry is continuously displaced by one lattice period. In the non-Hermitian case, the Tamm states connect different bands in the complex plane.