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Topological dissipation in a time-multiplexed photonic resonator network

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 442–449 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Topological phases feature robust edge states that are protected against the effects of defects and disorder. These phases have largely been studied in conservatively coupled systems, in which non-trivial topological invariants arise in the energy or frequency bands of a system. Here we show that, in dissipatively coupled systems, non-trivial topological invariants can emerge purely in a system’s dissipation. Using a highly scalable and easily reconfigurable time-multiplexed photonic resonator network, we experimentally demonstrate one- and two-dimensional lattices that host robust topological edge states with isolated dissipation rates, measure a dissipation spectrum that possesses a non-trivial topological invariant, and demonst rate topological protection of the network’s quality factor. The topologically non-trivial dissipation of our system exposes new opportunities to engineer dissipation in both classical and quantum systems. Moreover, our experimental platform’s straightforward scaling to higher dimensions and its ability to implement inhomogeneous, non-reciprocal and long range couplings may enable future work in the study of synthetic dimensions.

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Fig. 1: Topological dissipation and time-multiplexed resonator networks.
Fig. 2: Realizing 1D and 2D synthetic lattices with switchable boundary conditions in a time-multiplexed resonator network.
Fig. 3: Observations of the SSH edge state and topological phase transition.
Fig. 4: Robustness of the dissipative SSH edge state and its quality factor.
Fig. 5: Measurements of the SSH band structure.
Fig. 6: Measurement of the HH edge state and its localization.

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Data availability

The data used to generate the plots and results in this paper is available on the Caltech Research Data Repository (https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.2202). Source data are provided with this paper. All other data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used to analyse and plot the data in this paper is available on the Caltech Research Data Repository (https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.2202). The other code supporting the findings of this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to M. Fraser and A. Szameit for their insights. We acknowledge support from ARO grant no. W911NF-18-1-0285 and NSF grant nos. 1846273 and 1918549. S.F. acknowledges support of a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the US Department of Defense (grant no. N00014-17-1-3030). L.Y. acknowledges support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11974245). F.N. acknowledges support from ARO (W911NF-18-1-0358), JST-CREST (JPMJCR1676), JSPS (JP20H00134), AOARD (FA2386-20-1-4069) and FQXi (FQXi-IAF19-06). We wish to thank NTT Research for their financial and technical support.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Christian Leefmans, Avik Dutt.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Christian Leefmans & Alireza Marandi

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Avik Dutt & Shanhui Fan

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering and IPST, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Avik Dutt

  4. Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    James Williams, Midya Parto & Alireza Marandi

  5. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Luqi Yuan

  6. Theoretical Quantum Physics Laboratory, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, Wako, Japan

    Franco Nori

  7. Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Franco Nori

  8. RIKEN Center for Quantum Computing, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan

    Franco Nori

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Contributions

C.L., A.D. and A.M. devised the experiments and the underlying theory. C.L., A.D. and J.W. constructed and performed the experiments. C.L. collected and analysed the data. M.P. contributed to the theoretical analysis. L.Y. conceived the experiment. S.F. and F.N. provided additional insights and guidance. All the authors discussed the results and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. A.M. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Alireza Marandi.

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Nature Physics thanks Yaakov Lumer and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–17 and Sections 1–8.

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A compressed file containing the processed data plotted in Fig. 5b,c.

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Leefmans, C., Dutt, A., Williams, J. et al. Topological dissipation in a time-multiplexed photonic resonator network. Nat. Phys. 18, 442–449 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01492-w

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