Photonic Berry curvature in double liquid crystal microcavities with broken inversion symmetry

TL;DR

This paper explores a novel photonic device with coupled liquid crystal microcavities that exhibit tunable Berry curvature due to spin-orbit coupling and symmetry breaking, advancing topological photonics and spinoptronics.

Contribution

It introduces a new design of coupled liquid crystal microcavities with controllable Berry curvature, enabling active manipulation of photonic topological properties.

Findings

Demonstrates tunable energy gaps at diabolic points

Shows active control of Berry curvature in photonic bands

Opens pathways for room-temperature topological photonics

Abstract

We investigate a photonic device consisting of two coupled optical cavities possessing Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling, TE-TM splitting, and linear polarisation splitting that opens a tuneable energy gap at the diabolic points of the photon dispersion; giving rise to an actively addressable local Berry curvature. The proposed architecture stems from recent advancements in the design of artificial photonic gauge fields in liquid crystal cavities [K. Rechci\'{n}ska et al., Science 366, 727 (2019)]. Our study opens new perspectives for topological photonics, room-temperature spinoptronics, and studies on the quantum geometrical structure of photonic bands in extreme settings.