CAREER: Topology and Symmetry Enabled Phenomena in Lasers and Other Non-Hermitian Photonic Media

职业：激光器和其他非厄米光子介质中的拓扑和对称现象

• 批准号: 1847240
• 负责人: Li Ge
• 金额: $ 50.52万
• 依托单位: CUNY College of Staten Island
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-06-01 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1847240&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Topology; Symmetry; Enabled; Phenomena

This CAREER award supports an integrated research, education, and outreach project that focuses on the study of novel phenomena enabled by topology and symmetry in lasers and other photonic media. Topology and symmetry not only play an important role in arts and product designs, but they are also fundamental in determining the behaviors of the microscopic world. Even though such effects are largely elusive to the naked eye, certain aspects of their intriguing properties can be discerned using common optical devices, such as a laser not much more complicated than a price scanner. This project targets a major breakthrough in our understanding of how energy generation and dissipation, ubiquitous in optics and related fields, impact the physical rules governed by topology and symmetry. The outcome of this investigation is expected to advance our fundamental understanding in optics and physics, as well as in materials science and optoelectronics. By employing different paradigms to realize novel states enabled by topology and symmetry, optics and photonics can provide unique platforms beyond what nature has to offer and lead to technology innovations that have vital, real-world consequences. The success of the project may underpin a new generation of sophisticated photonic devices for optical communications and computing, which have far-reaching impacts on our daily lives and the whole society. This project aligns with the National Photonics Initiative, which aims at positioning the nation as a leader in next-generation photonics technologies; it is also an integral part of the strategic plan at the researcher's institute to promote cutting-edge research in photonics and other transformative areas. Leveraging the resources from the City University of New York, the largest urban university system in the US, the researcher will work closely with multiple outreach units to increase the awareness and interest of K-12 students in modern optics and photonics across New York City. The interdisciplinary nature of this project will provide an excellent research opportunity for graduate, undergraduate, and advanced high-school students, and the research will actively recruit and mentor students especially from underrepresented groups in STEM.This project explores the emerging juncture of two of the most energized fields in physics, namely topological phases of matter and non-Hermitian photonics based on novel symmetries. Built on the success of identifying the topological origin of the integer quantum Hall effect, the prediction and observation of topological insulators have created great excitement and put the study of topological phases of matter in the spotlight of modern physics. At the same time, the extension of quantum mechanics into the non-Hermitian regime using parity-time symmetry and its subsequent realization in photonics have led to an explosion of activities, exploring spontaneous symmetry breaking in non-Hermitian photonics and the counterintuitive phenomena they bring. Although there are promising findings combining these two exciting fields, it remains unclear how the complex-valued band structure of a non-Hermitian system is related to its edge states and to what extent the latter are protected by topology and symmetry. This project will tackle these important and other related questions through the following three aims: to investigate unusual topological edge states in non-Hermitian photonic media, focusing on their exotic localization properties and a new type of non-Hermitian Dirac and Weyl points; to examine a novel non-Hermitian symmetry termed complex mirror symmetry and its implication on high-order non-Hermitian degeneracies; and to probe the properties of symmetry-protected photonic zero-mode lasers using both semiclassical and quantum optical tools. Thanks to the flexible control of optical gain and loss, different paradigms towards building topological phases of matter in optics and photonics can be realized in non-Hermitian media, which not only enrich fundamental optical physics but also lead to unprecedented photonic devices with unique optical functionalities.The Physics Division and The Division of Materials Research contribute funds to this award.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个职业奖支持一个综合的研究，教育和推广项目，重点是研究激光和其他光子介质中的拓扑结构和对称性所带来的新现象。拓扑和对称不仅在艺术和产品设计中起着重要作用，而且它们也是决定微观世界行为的基础。尽管这种效应在很大程度上是肉眼难以捕捉的，但它们有趣的特性的某些方面可以使用普通的光学设备来识别，例如激光器并不比价格扫描仪复杂得多。这个项目的目标是在我们的理解如何能量产生和耗散，无处不在的光学和相关领域，影响拓扑和对称性所支配的物理规则的重大突破。这项研究的结果预计将促进我们在光学和物理学，以及材料科学和光电子学的基本理解。通过采用不同的范例来实现拓扑和对称性所实现的新状态，光学和光子学可以提供超越自然所能提供的独特平台，并导致具有重要现实世界影响的技术创新。该项目的成功可能会为新一代用于光通信和计算的精密光子器件奠定基础，这对我们的日常生活和整个社会产生深远的影响。该项目与国家光子学计划保持一致，该计划旨在将国家定位为下一代光子学技术的领导者;它也是研究所战略计划的一个组成部分，以促进光子学和其他变革领域的前沿研究。 利用美国最大的城市大学系统纽约城市大学的资源，研究人员将与多个外展单位密切合作，以提高整个纽约市K-12学生对现代光学和光子学的认识和兴趣。该项目的跨学科性质将为研究生，本科生和高中生提供一个极好的研究机会，该研究将积极招募和指导学生，特别是来自STEM中代表性不足的群体。该项目探讨了物理学中两个最活跃的领域的新兴结合点，即物质的拓扑相和基于新颖对称性的非厄米光子学。在成功确定整数量子霍尔效应的拓扑起源的基础上，拓扑绝缘体的预测和观察引起了极大的兴奋，并将物质拓扑相的研究置于现代物理学的聚光灯下。与此同时，利用宇称-时间对称性将量子力学扩展到非厄米体系及其随后在光子学中的实现导致了活动的爆炸，探索非厄米光子学中的自发对称性破缺及其带来的违反直觉的现象。虽然有很有前途的发现结合这两个令人兴奋的领域，目前还不清楚如何复值的带结构的非厄米特系统是有关其边缘状态，以及在何种程度上后者是由拓扑结构和对称性的保护。该项目将通过以下三个目标来解决这些重要问题和其他相关问题：研究非厄米特光子介质中不寻常的拓扑边缘态，重点关注它们的奇异局部化特性和新型非厄米特狄拉克和外尔点;研究一种新型的非厄米特对称性，称为复镜像对称性及其对高阶非厄米特简并的影响;并利用半经典和量子光学工具来探测光子零模激光器的特性。由于光学增益和损耗的灵活控制，在光学和光子学中建立物质拓扑相的不同范例可以在非厄米介质中实现，这不仅丰富了基础光学物理，而且导致了前所未有的具有独特光学功能的光子器件。物理部和材料研究部为该奖项提供资金。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Ultrafast control of vortex microlasers

• DOI: 10.1126/science.aba4597
• 发表时间: 2020-02-28
• 期刊: SCIENCE
• 影响因子: 56.9
• 作者: Huang, Can;Zhang, Chen;Song, Qinghai
• 通讯作者: Song, Qinghai

Origin of robust exceptional points: Restricted bulk zero mode

• DOI: 10.1103/physreva.101.063823
• 发表时间: 2020-05
• 期刊: Physical Review A
• 影响因子: 2.9
• 作者: J. H. Rivero;L. Ge

Analysis of Dirac exceptional points and their isospectral Hermitian counterparts

• DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.107.104106
• 发表时间: 2023-03
• 期刊: Physical Review B
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: J. H. Rivero;Liang Feng;L. Ge

Green's function as a defect state in a boundary value problem

• DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.103.195142
• 发表时间: 2021-02
• 期刊: Physical Review B
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: J. H. Rivero;L. Ge

Direct observation of zero modes in a non-Hermitian optical nanocavity array

非厄米光学纳米腔阵列中零模式的直接观察

• DOI: 10.1364/prj.440050
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Photonics Research
• 影响因子: 7.6
• 作者: Hentinger, Flore;Hedir, Melissa;Garbin, Bruno;Marconi, Mathias;Ge, Li;Raineri, Fabrice;Levenson, Juan A.;Yacomotti, Alejandro M.
• 通讯作者: Yacomotti, Alejandro M.