Topological Light
Topology -- the understanding of how things are connected -- remains
abstract, even with the popular example of doughnuts and coffee cups.
This concept, esoteric as it appears, is also neat because it is the basis
for creating ultrastable quantum "playgrounds." In topological systems,
certain quantum behaviors can be carefully probed and even harnessed
for all kinds of practical applications—from metrology to electronics.
Recently scientists have sought to design devices whose topological
features can be tuned, or even generated on-demand, like a switch.
Quantum Hall physics, inherently topological, has been seen in
electronic devices and in dilute atomic ensembles. In the twodimensional electron case, current flows along an edge/interface (“edge
states”) even in the presence of defects or other physical distortions in
the sample---this arises from global properties of the material. This is
strange when contrasted with conventional conductors/insulators,
where the transport is impeded due the presence of disorder.
PFC scientists report the first observation of such topological effects for
light in two dimensions. To accomplish this, they built a structure to
guide infrared light over the surface of a room temperature, silicon-oninsulator chip. The design consists of a 2D landscape consisting of nearly
flat ring-shaped silicon waveguides called resonators. Amazingly, they
directly observed light racing around the boundary, impervious to
defects. These photonic “edge states” are directly analogous to the
quantum Hall effect for electrons.
Since silicon is the preferred material for most electronics this novel
design assists with the miniaturization of optical communication
technology, bringing photons a little closer to their electronic circuit
counterparts. The work is a realization of a theoretical proposal by this
same group of PFC scientists and their collaborators more than a year
ago.
Artistic representation of topological light. Here, the light
moves on a topological surface—a mobius strip–
unaffected by the twists and turns and even possible
defects. Credit: E. Edwards
"Imaging topological edge states in Silicon photonics," M.
Hafezi, S. Mittal, J. Fan, A. Migdall, J.M. Taylor, Nature
Photonics, (2013) doi:10.1038/nphoton.2013.274