Smirnova Daria, Komissarenko Filipp, Vakulenko Anton, Kiriushechkina Svetlana, Smolina Ekaterina, Guddala Sriram, Allen Monica, Allen Jeffery, Alù Andrea, Khanikaev Alexander B
Research School of Physics, The Australian National University, Canberra, CNB, Australia.
Electrical Engineering and Physics, The City College of New York, New York, NY, USA.
Nat Commun. 2024 Jul 28;15(1):6355. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-50666-6.
The miniaturization of photonic technologies calls for a deliberate integration of diverse materials to enable novel functionalities in chip-scale devices. Topological photonic systems are a promising platform to couple structured light with solid-state matter excitations and establish robust forms of 1D polaritonic transport. Here, we demonstrate a mechanism to efficiently trap mid-IR structured phonon-polaritons in topological defects of a metasurface integrated with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). These defects, created by stitching displaced domains of a Kekulé-patterned metasurface, sustain localized polaritonic modes that originate from coupling of electromagnetic fields with hBN lattice vibrations. These 0D higher-order topological modes, comprising phononic and photonic components with chiral polarization, are imaged in real- and Fourier-space. The results reveal a singular radiation leakage profile and selective excitation through spin-polarized edge waves at heterogeneous topological interfaces. This offers impactful opportunities to control light-matter waves in their dimensional hierarchy, paving the way for topological polariton shaping, ultrathin structured light sources, and thermal management at the nanoscale.
光子技术的小型化要求有意整合多种材料，以在芯片级设备中实现新颖的功能。拓扑光子系统是一个很有前景的平台，可将结构化光与固态物质激发相耦合，并建立稳健的一维极化激元传输形式。在此，我们展示了一种机制，可在与六方氮化硼（hBN）集成的超表面的拓扑缺陷中高效捕获中红外结构化声子极化激元。这些缺陷由拼接凯库勒图案超表面的位移域产生，维持着源自电磁场与hBN晶格振动耦合的局域极化激元模式。这些零维高阶拓扑模式由具有手性极化的声子和光子成分组成，在实空间和傅里叶空间中成像。结果揭示了奇异的辐射泄漏分布以及通过异质拓扑界面处的自旋极化边缘波进行的选择性激发。这为在其维度层次中控制光物质波提供了重要机遇，为拓扑极化激元整形、超薄结构化光源以及纳米级热管理铺平了道路。
