TY - JOUR
T1 - Observation of Floquet solitons in a topological bandgap
AU - Mukherjee, Sebabrata
AU - Rechtsman, Mikael C.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/5/22
Y1 - 2020/5/22
N2 - Topological protection is a universal phenomenon that applies to electronic, photonic, ultracold atomic, mechanical, and other systems. The vast majority of research in these systems has explored the linear domain, where interparticle interactions are negligible. We experimentally observed solitons—waves that propagate without changing shape as a result of nonlinearity—in a photonic Floquet topological insulator. These solitons exhibited distinct behavior in that they executed cyclotron-like orbits associated with the underlying topology. Specifically, we used a waveguide array with periodic variations along the waveguide axis, giving rise to nonzero winding number, and the nonlinearity arose from the optical Kerr effect. This result applies to a range of bosonic systems because it is described by the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation (equivalently, the attractive Gross-Pitaevskii equation).
AB - Topological protection is a universal phenomenon that applies to electronic, photonic, ultracold atomic, mechanical, and other systems. The vast majority of research in these systems has explored the linear domain, where interparticle interactions are negligible. We experimentally observed solitons—waves that propagate without changing shape as a result of nonlinearity—in a photonic Floquet topological insulator. These solitons exhibited distinct behavior in that they executed cyclotron-like orbits associated with the underlying topology. Specifically, we used a waveguide array with periodic variations along the waveguide axis, giving rise to nonzero winding number, and the nonlinearity arose from the optical Kerr effect. This result applies to a range of bosonic systems because it is described by the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation (equivalently, the attractive Gross-Pitaevskii equation).
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U2 - 10.1126/science.aba8725
DO - 10.1126/science.aba8725
M3 - Article
C2 - 32439788
AN - SCOPUS:85085157988
SN - 0036-8075
VL - 368
SP - 856
EP - 859
JO - Science
JF - Science
IS - 6493
ER -