Tailored Triggering of High-Quality Multi-Dimensional Coupled Topological States in Valley Photonic Crystals.

The combination of higher-order topological insulators and valley photonic crystals has recently aroused extensive attentions due to the great potential in flexible and efficient optical field manipulations. Here, we computationally propose a photonic device for the 1550 nm communication band, in which the topologically protected electromagnetic modes with high quality can be selectively triggered and modulated on demand. Through introducing two valley photonic crystal units without any structural alteration, we successfully achieve multi-dimensional coupled topological states thanks to the diverse electromagnetic characteristics of two valley edge states. According to the simulations, the constructed topological photonic devices can realize Fano lines on the spectrum and show high-quality localized modes by tuning the coupling strength between the zero-dimensional valley corner states and the one-dimensional valley edge states. Furthermore, we extend the valley-locked properties of edge states to higher-order valley topological insulators, where the selected corner states can be directionally excited by chiral source. More interestingly, we find that the modulation of multi-dimensional coupled photonic topological states with pseudospin dependence become more efficient compared with those uncoupled modes. This work presents a valuable approach for multi-dimensional optical field manipulation, which may support potential applications in on-chip integrated nanophotonic devices.

Higher-Order Topological States in Surface-Wave Photonic Crystals.

Photonic topological states have revolutionized the understanding of the propagation and scattering of light. The recent discovery of higher-order photonic topological insulators opens an emergent horizon for 0D topological corner states. However, the previous realizations of higher-order topological insulators in electromagnetic-wave systems suffer from either a limited operational frequency range due to the lumped components involved or a bulky structure with a large footprint, which are unfavorable for achieving compact photonic devices. To overcome these limitations, a planar surface-wave photonic crystal realization of 2D higher-order topological insulators is hereby demonstrated experimentally. The surface-wave photonic crystals exhibit a very large bulk bandgap (a bandwidth of 28%) due to multiple Bragg scatterings and host 1D gapped edge states described by massive Dirac equations. The topology of those higher-dimensional photonic bands leads to the emergence of in-gap 0D corner states, which provide a route toward robust cavity modes for scalable compact photonic devices.