Abstract
Many works on topological insulators have focused on periodic lattice systems; where short- and long-range order is considered. Here we construct a two-dimensional amorphous photonic crystal with short-range order and a controllable level of long-range order and experimentally investigate the transport of topological edge states in this amorphous system. We demonstrate that topology properties remain constant with unidirectional edge state propagation; immune to specific disorder strength. The partition phenomena of edge states are also observed at the intersection of four topological channels in microwave experiments. This proposed amorphous configuration provides new opportunities to explore the relationship between short-range order and topology and may alleviate the fabrication difficulties of topological optical devices for practical applications.
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This work was supported by the Key Academic Discipline Project of China University of Mining and Technology (Grant No. 2022WLXK06); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11874274; 12004425; and 12274315); the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20200630); the Qing Lan Project; a Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD); and the Basic Research Program of Xuzhou (Grant No. KC22016). We would like to thank Prof. Peiheng Zhou and Dr. Gui-Geng Liu for their help.
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Yang, Y., Qian, X., Shi, L. et al. Unidirectional transport in amorphous topological photonic crystals. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 66, 274212 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-023-2093-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-023-2093-9