Optical isolation with nonlinear topological photonics

• المؤلفون الرئيسيون: Zhou, Xin, Wang, You, Leykam, Daniel, Chong, Yi Dong
• مؤلفون آخرون: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• التنسيق: مقال
• اللغة: English
• منشور في: 2018
• الموضوعات: Optical Isolators; Solitons
• الوصول للمادة أونلاين: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87224; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44338

It is shown that the concept of topological phase transitions can be used to design nonlinear photonic structures exhibiting power thresholds and discontinuities in their transmittance. This provides a novel route to devising nonlinear optical isolators. We study three representative designs: (i) a waveguide array implementing a nonlinear 1D Su–Schrieffer–Heeger model, (ii) a waveguide array implementing a nonlinear 2D Haldane model, and (iii) a 2D lattice of coupled-ring waveguides. In the first two cases, we find a correspondence between the topological transition of the underlying linear lattice and the power threshold of the transmittance, and show that the transmission behavior is attributable to the emergence of a self-induced topological soliton. In the third case, we show that the topological transition produces a discontinuity in the transmittance curve, which can be exploited to achieve sharp jumps in the power-dependent isolation ratio.