Imaging topological edge states in silicon photonics

Published

October 20, 2013

Author(s)

Mohammad Hafezi, Jingyun Fan, Alan L. Migdall, Jacob M. Taylor

Abstract

Systems with topological oder exhibit exotic phenomena including fractional statistics. While most systems with topological order have been electronic, advances in our understanding of synthetic gauge fields have enabled realization of topological order in cold atoms or even with photons. Here, we demonstrate the experimental realization of synthetic magnetic fields for infrared photons at room temperature. Our implementation corresponds to a synthetic spin orbit Hamiltonian, which requires linear optics does not break time reversal symmetry. As a direct proof of topological order, we observe for the first time, edge states for light in a two-dimensional system. This realization in principle allows investigation of wide topological order in photonics system by entering non-interacting and many-body regime.

Citation

Nature Photonics

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.20

Keywords

quantum information, quantum optics, topological order, quantum simulation

Citation

Hafezi, M. , Fan, J. , Migdall, A. and Taylor, J. (2013), Imaging topological edge states in silicon photonics, Nature Photonics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.20 (Accessed October 22, 2025)