Edge Solitons in Nonlinear-Photonic Topological Insulators

We show theoretically that a photonic topological insulator can support edge solitons that are strongly self-localized and propagate unidirectionally along the lattice edge. The photonic topological insulator consists of a Floquet lattice of coupled helical waveguides, in a medium with local Kerr no...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Leykam, Daniel, Chong, Yi Dong
Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/84043
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/42909
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We show theoretically that a photonic topological insulator can support edge solitons that are strongly self-localized and propagate unidirectionally along the lattice edge. The photonic topological insulator consists of a Floquet lattice of coupled helical waveguides, in a medium with local Kerr nonlinearity. The soliton behavior is strongly affected by the topological phase of the linear lattice. The topologically nontrivial phase gives a continuous family of solitons, while the topologically trivial phase gives an embedded soliton that occurs at a single power and arises from a self-induced local nonlinear shift in the intersite coupling. The solitons can be used for nonlinear switching and logical operations, functionalities that have not yet been explored in topological photonics. We demonstrate using solitons to perform selective filtering via propagation through a narrow channel, and using soliton collisions for optical switching.