Nonreciprocal lasing in topological cavities of arbitrary geometries

Topological lasing Resonant cavities that confine light are crucial components of lasers. Typically, these cavities are designed to high specification to get the best possible output. That, however, can limit their integration into photonic devices and optical circuits. Bahari et al. fabricated resonant cavities of arbitrary shape within a hybrid photonic crystal structure. The confinement of light to topologically protected edge states resulted in lasing at communication wavelengths. Relaxing the resonant cavity design criteria should be useful in designing photonic devices. Science, this issue p. 636 Resonant cavities of arbitrary shape can be designed to provide lasing into topically protected edge states. Resonant cavities are essential building blocks governing many wave-based phenomena, but their geometry and reciprocity fundamentally limit the integration of optical devices. We report, at telecommunication wavelengths, geometry-independent and integrated nonreciprocal topological cavities that couple stimulated emission from one-way photonic edge states to a selected waveguide output with an isolation ratio in excess of 10 decibels. Nonreciprocity originates from unidirectional edge states at the boundary between photonic structures with distinct topological invariants. Our experimental demonstration of lasing from topological cavities provides the opportunity to develop complex topological circuitry of arbitrary geometries for the integrated and robust generation and transport of photons in classical and quantum regimes.

[1]  M. Hafezi,et al.  Imaging topological edge states in silicon photonics , 2013, Nature Photonics.

[2]  Kevin P. Chen,et al.  Observation of Photonic Topological Valley Hall Edge States. , 2017, Physical review letters.

[3]  Y. Kivshar,et al.  Experimental demonstration of topological effects in bianisotropic metamaterials , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[4]  Gennady Shvets,et al.  All-Si valley-Hall photonic topological insulator , 2016, 2016 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO).

[5]  Stefan Nolte,et al.  Strain-induced pseudomagnetic field and photonic Landau levels in dielectric structures , 2012, Nature Photonics.

[6]  Dong Hun Kim,et al.  On-chip optical isolation in monolithically integrated non-reciprocal optical resonators , 2011 .

[7]  C. Kane,et al.  Topological Insulators , 2019, Electromagnetic Anisotropy and Bianisotropy.

[8]  Xiang Zhang,et al.  Infrared Topological Plasmons in Graphene. , 2017, Physical review letters.

[9]  Zhifang Lin,et al.  Experimental realization of self-guiding unidirectional electromagnetic edge states. , 2011, Physical review letters.

[10]  John,et al.  Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlattices. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[11]  Y. Kivshar,et al.  Subwavelength topological edge States in optically resonant dielectric structures. , 2015, Physical review letters.

[12]  B. Kant'e,et al.  Topological terahertz circuits using semiconductors , 2016, 1607.02697.

[13]  M. Segev,et al.  Photonic Floquet topological insulators , 2012, Nature.

[14]  Antonio-José Almeida,et al.  NAT , 2019, Springer Reference Medizin.

[15]  Alán Aspuru-Guzik,et al.  Topologically protected excitons in porphyrin thin films. , 2014, Nature materials.

[16]  E. Yablonovitch,et al.  Inhibited spontaneous emission in solid-state physics and electronics. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[17]  R. Fleury,et al.  Topologically robust sound propagation in an angular-momentum-biased graphene-like resonator lattice , 2015, Nature Communications.

[18]  S. Raghu,et al.  Possible realization of directional optical waveguides in photonic crystals with broken time-reversal symmetry. , 2008, Physical review letters.

[19]  Andrea Alù,et al.  Floquet topological insulators for sound , 2015, Nature Communications.

[20]  Zheng Wang,et al.  Observation of unidirectional backscattering-immune topological electromagnetic states , 2009, Nature.

[21]  Camille Jouvaud,et al.  Robust reconfigurable electromagnetic pathways within a photonic topological insulator. , 2016, Nature materials.

[22]  I. Sagnes,et al.  Lasing in topological edge states of a one-dimensional lattice , 2017, 1704.07310.

[23]  Claudio Conti,et al.  Topological lasing in resonant photonic structures , 2016 .

[24]  F. D. M. Haldane,et al.  Analogs of quantum-Hall-effect edge states in photonic crystals , 2008 .

[25]  Yuri S. Kivshar,et al.  Three-dimensional all-dielectric photonic topological insulator , 2017 .

[26]  Stefan Nolte,et al.  Observation of unconventional edge states in 'photonic graphene'. , 2014, Nature materials.

[27]  Kevin P. Chen,et al.  Observation of photonic topological valley transport , 2017, 2017 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO).

[28]  C. T. Chan,et al.  Experimental realization of photonic topological insulator in a uniaxial metacrystal waveguide. , 2014, Nature communications.

[29]  N. Engheta,et al.  Geometry-invariant resonant cavities , 2015, Nature Communications.

[30]  Gennady Shvets,et al.  Photonic topological insulators. , 2013, Nature materials.

[31]  Alexander Szameit,et al.  Photonic Topological Insulators , 2014, CLEO 2014.