Topological photonic crystals: physics, designs and applications

TL;DR

This review discusses the physics, design, and applications of topological photonic crystals, highlighting their ability to enable robust light transport and their potential in practical photonic devices.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the physics, design strategies, and applications of topological photonic crystals across different dimensions and phases.

Findings

Demonstration of topological phases in photonic crystals

Design methods for topological photonic structures

Potential for robust, error-immune photonic devices

Abstract

The recent research of topological photonics has not only proposed and realized novel topological phenomena such as one-way broadband propagation and robust transport of light, but also designed and fabricated photonic devices with high-performance indexes which are immune to fabrication errors such as defects or disorders. Photonic crystals, which are periodic optical structures with the advantages of good light field confinement and multiple adjusting degrees of freedom, provide a powerful platform to control the flow of light. With the topology defined in the reciprocal space, photonic crystals have been widely used to reveal different topological phases of light and demonstrate topological photonic functionalities. In this review, we present the physics of topological photonic crystals with different dimensions, models and topological phases. The design methods of topological photonic crystals are introduced. Furthermore, we review the applications of topological photonic crystals in passive and active photonics. These researches pave the way of applying topological photonic crystals in practical photonic devices.