Talk page

Title:
Topological Photonics with Twisted Resonators

Speaker:
Jonathan Simon

Abstract:
I will present recent work realizing photonic Landau levels on a cone. I will first connect the physical picture of photons repeatedly traversing a multi-mirror optical resonator to a Floquet model, and discuss the single-particle dynamics accessible under such conditions: arbitrary quadratic Hamiltonians including a synthetic gauge field for the photons. I will then focus on the case of a trapped photon in a magnetic field, and discuss the approach to the LLL configuration in both planar and conical geometries; the latter is reached by explicitly exploiting the Floquet driving. We explore the cone experimentally, measuring the LDOS in the LLL and validating the Wen-Zee formalism on flux-threaded and unthreaded cones. Near term prospects include demonstration of a Thouless pump, bosonic fractional quantum Hall states via atom-induced photon-photon interactions, and generation of more exotic single-particle dynamics via aberrations of the mirrors.

Link:
http://scgp.stonybrook.edu/video_portal/video.php?id=2570

Workshop:
Simons- Workshop: Geometry of Quantum States in Condensed Matter Systems