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Quantized topological pumping in Floquet synthetic dimensions with a driven dissipative photonic molecule

Nature Physics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Topological effects are characterized by topological invariants, which are typically integer-valued, and lead to robust quantized transport channels in space, time and other degrees of freedom. The temporal channel in particular allows one to achieve higher-dimensional topological effects by driving the system with several incommensurate frequencies. However, dissipation is generally detrimental to such topological effects. Here we introduce a photonic molecule subjected to dissipation and several radio-frequency and optical drives as a candidate system for observing quantized transport along Floquet synthetic dimensions. We describe preliminary experiments contrasting the topological and trivial phases. Topological energy pumping in the incommensurately modulated photonic molecule is enhanced by the driven and dissipative nature of our platform. Furthermore, we provide a path for realizing Weyl points and measuring the Berry curvature emanating from these reciprocal-space magnetic monopoles and illustrate the capabilities for higher-dimensional topological Hamiltonian simulation in this platform. Our approach enables direct k-space engineering of a wide variety of Hamiltonians using modulation bandwidths that are well below the free spectral range of integrated photonic cavities.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of the proposed system.
Fig. 2: Signatures of topological dynamics with optical driving and dissipation.
Fig. 3: Work done by the drives.
Fig. 4: Experimental data from a fibre-based photonic molecule.
Fig. 5: Eigenenergy of \({{{\mathcal{H}}}}\) and the DoS.
Fig. 6: Weyl-point band structure and Berry curvature.

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Data availability

Source data are available for this paper and have been deposited in the Zenodo database under accession code https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10530864.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Northrop Grumman seed grant, a National Quantum Laboratory joint seed grant from IonQ and the University of Maryland, and a grant from the National Science Foundation for Quantum Sensing Challenges for Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems (Grant No. 2326792). We thank C. Smith for Fig. 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Sashank Kaushik Sridhar, Dhruv Srinivasan, Alexander R. Miller & Avik Dutt

  2. Department of Physical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, Mohanpur, India

    Sayan Ghosh

  3. Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Avik Dutt

  4. National Quantum Laboratory (QLab) at Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Avik Dutt

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  1. Sashank Kaushik Sridhar
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Contributions

S.K.S. and A.D. worked out the idea and proposal. S.K.S. and S.G. formulated the theory and performed the simulations. S.K.S. built the experimental set-up, with contributions from D.S. and A.R.M. S.K.S. performed the measurements and analysed the data. S.K.S. and A.D. wrote the paper. A.D. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Avik Dutt.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections I and II and Figs. 1–8.

Supplementary Video 1

Bloch sphere evolution of the topological phase.

Supplementary Video 2

Bloch sphere evolution of the trivial phase.

Supplementary Video 3

Bloch sphere evolution for m = 1 (rational drives).

Supplementary Video 4

Bloch sphere evolution for m = 3 (rational drives).

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Sridhar, S.K., Ghosh, S., Srinivasan, D. et al. Quantized topological pumping in Floquet synthetic dimensions with a driven dissipative photonic molecule. Nat. Phys. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02413-3

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