Interaction between giant atoms in a one-dimensional topological waveguide

TL;DR

This paper investigates how giant atoms interact within a one-dimensional topological waveguide, revealing how topological phases influence bound states, coherent interactions, and excitation transfer, with potential applications in topological quantum systems.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of giant atom interactions in topological waveguides, highlighting the effects of topological phases on bound states and coherent interactions, and proposes methods to control decay and dissipation.

Findings

Topological phase enhances coherent interactions compared to trivial phase.

Giant atom-photon bound states are generated and distributed differently in topological vs trivial phases.

Designing coupling points can achieve zero decay and enable excitation transfer.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider giant atoms coupled to a one-dimensional topological waveguide reservoir. We studied the following two cases. In the bandgap regime, where the giant-atom frequency lies outside the band, we study the generation and distribution of giant atom-photon bound states and the difference between the topological waveguide in topological and trivial phases. When the strengths of the giant atoms coupled to the two sub-lattice points are equal, the photons distribution is symmetrical and the chiral photon distribution is exhibited when the coupling is different. The coherent interactions between giant atoms are induced by virtual photons, or can be understood as an overlap of photon bound-state wave functions, and decay exponentially with increasing distance between the giant atoms. We also find that the coherent interactions induced by the topological phase are larger than those induced by the trivial phase for the same bandgap width. In the band regime, the giant-atom frequency lies in the band, under the Born-Markov approximation, we obtained effective coherence and correlated dissipative interactions between the giant atoms mediated by topological waveguide reservoirs, which depend on the giant-atom coupling nodes. We analyze the effect of the form of the giant-atom coupling point on the decay, and on the associated dissipation. The results show that we can design the coupling form as well as the frequency of the giant atoms to achieve zero decay and correlation dissipation and non-zero coherent interactions. Finally we used this scheme to realize the excitation transfer of giant atoms. Our work will promote the study of topological matter coupled to giant atoms.