Direct Observation of Topology from Single-Photon Dynamics
Open accessAbstract
Topology manifesting in many branches of physics deepens our understanding on state of matters. Topological photonics has recently become a rapidly growing field since artificial photonic structures can be well designed and constructed to support topological states, especially a promising large-scale implementation of these states using photonic chips. Meanwhile, due to the inapplicability of Hall conductance to photons, it is still an elusive problem to directly measure the integer topological invariants and topological phase transitions in photonic system. Here, we present a direct observation of topological winding numbers by using bulk-state photon dynamics on a chip. Furthermore, we for the first time experimentally observe the topological phase transition points via single-photon dynamics. The integrated topological structures, direct measurement in the single-photon regime and strong robustness against disorder add the key elements into the toolbox of "quantum topological photonics" and may enable topologically protected quantum information processing in large scale.
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The wave function and band modes can be mapped to robust observables in 1D real space.
“The manipulation and manifestation of the wave function and band modes can be appropriately mapped to the robustly certain observables in 1D real space [26, 27].”
From Observing movement of Dirac cones from single-photon dynamics (2021) · cites this paper as [27]
The main text (pp. 1–2) describes a one-dimensional lattice and shows how its topological winding number can be measured through a real-space photon-population observable. The results (p. 4) report that the topological transition remains identifiable with introduced disorder. The paper does not establish that the wave function and band modes themselves are mapped to robust observables. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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References 44 · Cited by 98
- Authors
- Wang, Y., Lu, Y.-H., Mei, F., Gao, J., Li, Z.-M., Tang, H., Zhu, S.-L., Jia, S., & Jin, X.-M.
- Affiliations
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN)
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Shanxi University (CN)
- Venue
- Physical Review Letters
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Published
- 2019-05-16
- Volume
- 122
- Issue
- 19
- Pages
- 193903-193903
- ISSN
- 0031-9007 (ISSN-L)
- 1079-7114
- OpenAlex
- W2899688016
- Cited by
- 98
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 6
- FWCI
- 7.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Physical Review Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Topological Materials and Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Strong Light-Matter Interactions
- Keywords
- topological photonics, topological winding number, topological phase transition, photonic integrated circuits, disorder robustness, topological invariants
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