Colloquium: Mohammad Hafezi, University of Maryland/Joint Quantum Institute
There are tremendous efforts underway to better understand systems with topological order --- global properties that are not discernible locally. The best-known examples are quantum Hall effects in electronic systems, where insensitivity to local properties manifests itself as conductance through edge states which are insensitive to defects and disorder. In this talk, we demonstrate how similar physics can be observed for photons; specifically, how various quantum Hall Hamiltonians can be simulated in an optical platform. We report on the first imaging and measurement of topological photonic edge state using silicon-on-insulator technology and recent results on the generation of correlated pair of photons in these topological structures. In the end, we will discuss the possibility of implementing and detecting fractional quantum Hall states of light.
S. Mittal, S. Ganeshan, J. Fan, A. Vaezi, and M. Hafezi , Nature Photonics , 10, 180–183 (2016)
S. Mittal, V. Vikram Orre, and M. Hafezi Optics Express, 24, 15631-15641 (2016)
S. Mittal, J. Fan, S. Faez, A. Migdall, J. M. Taylor, and M. Hafezi , Phys. Rev. Lett., 113, 087403 (2014)