EFRI NewLAW: New frontiers for topologically-protected propagation of light, sound, elastic and mechanical waves

该奖项支持一个雄心勃勃的四年团队努力，目标是构思、探索、设计和实现基于纳米光子、无线电波、声波、弹性、机械相互作用及其组合的新型设备。这些设备将利用与光波、声波和机械波的传播有关的坚固、宽带、拓扑保护的传输特性。这些努力将旨在建立一种新的信号传输模式，并将通过在可重构性、隔离性、健壮性和非互惠传输特性方面提供颠覆性进步，为技术打开前所未有的机遇，这将使我们的社会面临几个全国性的重大挑战。其中包括电信行业增强的数据速率和频谱效率、医疗保健行业增强的声学成像、民用资源管理和国防行业的传感概念。其他可能受益于该计划带来的进步的领域包括隔音、辐射加固、改进的纳米组装、制造部门的识别和标记，以及光子行业制造公差和计算效率的提高。与此同时，该计划将让国内对其技术进步直接感兴趣的公司和下一代科学家参与一个高度跨学科的研究计划，重点是代表性不足的多样性和少数。在凝聚态物理中，拓扑绝缘体在边缘实现强劲的单向电子传导，同时在整体上绝缘。这些不同寻常的性质源于它们电子能带结构的非平凡拓扑，最近启发了电磁、声学、弹性和机械系统中的光子和声子的类似物。到目前为止，这些努力主要集中在基于物理的探索上，对设备工程和应用的影响有限。该项目将侧重于以工程为导向的研究，这些研究将大大推进由合成规范场(通过时空调制和/或非线性波物相互作用)和伪自旋(通过场和结构的内部和空间对称性实现)实现的拓扑保护波传播的理论、分析、设计、建模和控制；将为几种应用开发紧凑型拓扑设备的准确分析、建模和优化设计，包括隔离器和环行器、多路复用器、非互易发射器和拓扑组件，适用于电磁、声波、弹性波及其混合体；将在实验上验证、实现和表征这些设备，不仅展示拓扑保护，而且展示改进的性能及其在实际应用系统中的影响；并将引入和探索新的拓扑保护机制，如由非线性和多物理波-物质相互作用引起的拓扑有序，显著推动拓扑科学的前沿，从基础理论到高级制造和表征。

This award supports an ambitious four-year team-effort with the objective of conceiving, exploring, designing and realizing a new class of devices based on nanophotonic, radio-wave, acoustic, elastic, mechanical interactions and their combinations. The devices will exploit robust, broadband, topologically-protected transport properties related to the propagation of optical, acoustic and mechanical waves. These efforts will aim at establishing a new paradigm for signal transport and will open unprecedented opportunities for technology by offering disruptive advances in reconfigurability, isolation, robustness and non-reciprocal transmission properties that will benefit several national grand challenges for our society. These include enhanced data-rate and spectrum efficiency for the telecom industry, enhanced acoustic imaging for the healthcare industry, sensing concepts for civil resource management and the defense industry. Other areas that may benefit from the progress enabled by this program include sound proofing, radiation hardening, improved nano-assembly, identification and tagging for the manufacturing sector, and improvements in fabrication tolerance and computational efficiency for the photonic industry. At the same time, this program will engage domestic companies with direct interest in its technological progress and the next generation of scientists in a highly interdisciplinary research program, with emphasis on underrepresented diversity and minorities.In condensed-matter physics, topological insulators enable robust one-way electron conduction at their edges, and at the same time insulation in the bulk. These unusual properties, stemming from the non-trivial topology of their electronic band structure, have recently inspired analogues for photons and phonons in electromagnetic, acoustic, elastic and mechanical systems. So far these efforts have been focused on physics-based explorations, with limited impact on device engineering and applications. This project will focus on engineering-oriented investigations that: will significantly advance the theory, analysis, design, modeling and control of topologically-protected wave propagation achieved by synthetic gauge fields (enabled by spatio-temporal modulation and/or nonlinear wave-matter interactions) and pseudo-spins (enabled by internal and spatial symmetries of fields and structures); will develop accurate analysis, modeling and optimal designs of compact topological devices for several applications, including isolators and circulators, multiplexers, non-reciprocal emitters and topological assembly, applicable to electromagnetic, acoustic, elastic waves and their hybrids; will experimentally verify, realize and characterize these devices not only to demonstrate topological protection, but also to show improved performance and their impact in practical application systems; and will introduce and explore new mechanisms for topological protection, such as topological order induced by nonlinearities and by multi-physics wave-matter interactions, significantly advancing the frontiers of topological science, from basic theory to advanced fabrication and characterization.