Flux-mediated effective Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model in an impurity decorated diamond chain

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how impurity decoration in a fluxed diamond chain can engineer effective topological models like the SSH model, revealing robust edge states and suggesting experimental optical waveguide implementations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to create effective topological models from flat-band systems with impurities and flux, enhancing robustness of edge states.

Findings

Effective SSH model realized via impurity patterning

Topological edge states show increased robustness to disorder

Proposed optical waveguide implementation for experimental realization

Abstract

In flat-band systems with non-orthogonal compact localized states (CLSs), onsite perturbations couple neighboring CLSs and generate exponentially-decaying impurity states, whose degree of localization depends on lattice parameters. In this work, a diamond chain with constant magnetic flux per plaquette is decorated with several controlled onsite impurities in a patterned arrangement, generating an effective system that emerges from the flat band. The coupling distribution of the effective system is determined by the relative distance between impurities and the value of the flux, which can be chosen to engineer a wide variety of models. We employ a staggered distribution of impurities that effectively produces the well-known Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, and show that the topological edge states display an enhanced robustness to non-chiral disorder due to an averaging effect over their extension. Finally, we provide a route to implement the system experimentally using optical waveguides that guide orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes. This work opens the way for the design of topologically protected impurity states in other flat-band systems or physical platforms with non-orthogonal bases.