"Shaking" Photons out of a Topological Material

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been a great interest in topological effects, with concepts originally developed in the context of electron transport in condensed matter platforms now being extended to optical systems. While topological properties in electronic systems are often linked to the quantization of electric conductivity observed in the integer quantum Hall effect, a direct analogue in optics remains elusive. In this study, we bridge this gap by demonstrating that the response of the Poynting vector (which may be regarded as a "photon current") to the mechanical acceleration of a medium provides a precise photonic analogue of the electric conductivity. In particular, it is shown that the photonic conductivity determines the energy irreversibly transferred from a periodic mechanical driving of the medium to the electromagnetic field. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that for nonreciprocal systems enclosed in a cavity, the constant acceleration of the system induces a flow of photons along a direction perpendicular to the acceleration, analogous to the Hall effect but for light. The spectral density of the photonic conductivity is quantized in the band gaps of the bulk region with the conductivity quantum determined by the gap Chern number.