Anomalous Topological Phases and Unpaired Dirac Cones in Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators

We propose a class of photonic Floquet topological insulators based on staggered helical lattices and an efficient numerical method for calculating their Floquet bandstructure. The lattices support anomalous Floquet topological insulator phases with vanishing Chern number and tunable topological tra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-06
Main Authors: Leykam, Daniel, Rechtsman, M C, Chong, Y D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anderson localization
Cones
Critical point
Field strength
Lattice parameters
Lattices (mathematics)
Numerical methods
Photonics
Topological insulators
Topology
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Summary:We propose a class of photonic Floquet topological insulators based on staggered helical lattices and an efficient numerical method for calculating their Floquet bandstructure. The lattices support anomalous Floquet topological insulator phases with vanishing Chern number and tunable topological transitions. At the critical point of the topological transition, the bandstructure hosts a single unpaired Dirac cone, which yields a variety of unusual transport effects: a discrete analogue of conical diffraction, weak antilocalization not limited by intervalley scattering, and suppression of Anderson localization. Unlike previous designs, the effective gauge field strength can be controlled via lattice parameters such as the inter-helix distance, significantly reducing radiative losses and enabling applications such as switchable topological wave-guiding.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1601.01764