arXiv subjects

Xiang Ni

Publications and source records attributed to Xiang Ni.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Demonstration of a quantized acoustic octupole topological insulator

Recently extended from the modern theory of electric polarization, quantized multipole topological insulators (QMTIs) describe higher-order multipole moments, lying in nested Wilson loops, which are inherently quantized by lattice symmetries. Overlooked in the past, QMTIs reveal new types of gapped boundaries, which themselves represent lower-dimensional topological phases and host topologically protected zero-dimensional (0D) corner states. Inspired by these pioneering theoretical predictions, tremendous efforts have been devoted to the experimental observation of topological quantized quadrupole phase in a variety of two dimensional (2D) metamaterials. However, due to stringent requirements of anti-commuting reflection symmetries in crystals, it has been challenging to achieve higher-order quantized multipole moments, such as octupole moments, in a realistic three-dimensional (3D) structure. Here, we overcome these challenges, and experimentally realize the acoustic analogue of a quantized octupole topological insulator (QOTIs) using negatively coupled resonators. We confirm by first-principle studies that our design possesses a quantized octupole topological phase, and experimentally demonstrate spectroscopic evidence of a topological hierarchy of states in our metamaterial, observing 3rd order corner states, 2nd order hinge states and 1st order surface states. Furthermore, we reveal topological phase transitions from higher- to lower-order multipole moments in altered designs of acoustic TIs. Our work offers a new pathway to explore higher-order topological states (HOTSs) in 3D classical platforms.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Photonic Higher-Order Topological States Induced by Long Range Interactions

The discovery of topological phases has recently led to a paradigm shift in condensed matter physics, and facilitated breakthroughs in engineered photonics and acoustic metamaterials. Topological insulators (TIs) enable the generation of electronic, photonic, and acoustic modes exhibiting wave propagation that is resilient to disorder, irrespective of manufacturing precision or unpredictable defects induced by the operational environment, known as topological protection. While originally limited to a dimensionality of the protected states that is one dimension lower than the host TI material, the recent discovery of higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs) provides the potential to overcome this dimensionality limitations by offering topological protection over an extended range of dimensionalities. Here we demonstrate 2D photonic HOTI (PHOTI) with topological states two dimensions lower than the one of the host system. We consider a photonic metacrystal of distorted Kagome lattice geometry that exhibits topological bulk polarization, leading to the emergence of 1D topological edge states and of higher order 0D states confined to the corners of the structure. Interestingly, in addition to corner states due to the nearest neighbour interactions and protected by generalized chiral symmetry 1, we discover and take advantage of a new class of topological corner states sustained by long-range interactions, available in wave-based systems, such as in photonics. Our findings demonstrate that photonic HOTIs possess richer physics compared to their condensed matter counterparts, offering opportunities for engineering novel designer electromagnetic states with unique topological robustness.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

Demonstration of a 3rd order hierarchy of higher order topological states in a three-dimensional acoustic metamaterial

In the past years classical wave-systems have constituted an excellent platform for emulating complex quantum phenomena. This approach has been especially fruitful in demonstrating topological phenomena in photonics and acoustics: from chiral edge states of Chern insulators and helical edge states of topological insulators to higher-dimensional topological states of quasiperiodic systems and systems with synthetic dimensions. Recently, a new class of topological states localized in more than one dimension of a D-dimensional system, referred to as higher-order topological (HOT) states, has been reported, offering an even more versatile platform to confine and control classical radiation and mechanical motion. However, because experimental research of HOT states has so far been limited to two-dimensional (2D) systems, third and higher-order states have evaded experimental observation. Studying higher-dimensional classical systems therefore opens an opportunity to emulate higher-order topological insulators and explore HOT states beyond second order. In this letter, we design and experimentally study a 3D acoustic metamaterial supporting third-order (0D) topological corner states, along with second-order (1D) edge states within the same topological bandgap, thus establishing a full hierarchy of HOT states in three dimensions, co-existing robustly within the same topological bandgap. The metamaterial is implemented over a versatile additive manufacturing platform, which enables rapid prototyping of metaatoms and metamolecules, which can be snapped together to form 3D metamaterials with complex geometries. The assembled 3D topological metamaterial represents the acoustic analogue of a pyrochlore lattice made of interconnected molecules, and is shown to exhibit topological bulk polarization, leading to the emergence of topological HOT states localized in all three or in two dimensions.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2018

Observation of Bulk Polarization Transitions and Higher-Order Embedded Topological Eigenstates for Sound

Topological systems are inherently robust to disorder and continuous perturbations, resulting in dissipation-free edge transport of electrons in quantum solids, or reflectionless guiding of photons and phonons in classical wave systems characterized by Chern or spin-Chern topological invariants. These established examples of topological physics, however, do not exhaust all possible topological phases, and recently a new class of topological metamaterials characterized by bulk polarization has been introduced. In addition to edge conduction, these systems have been shown to host higher-order topological modes. Here, we introduce and measure topological bulk polarization in 3D printed two-dimensional acoustic meta-structures, and observe topological transitions as the design parameters are tuned. We also demonstrate that our topological meta-structure hosts both 1D edge and higher-order 0D corner states with unique acoustic properties. The edge states have spin polarization that reverses for opposite propagation direction, thus supporting directional excitation. Corner states are pinned to the meta-structure corners, and rapidly decay both along the edges and into the bulk. Interestingly, these 0D states can spectrally overlap with the continuum of bulk states, but are not compatible with radiation, thus enabling embedded topological eigenstates within the continuum of bulk modes. Their confinement and inherent topological robustness is experimentally confirmed by deliberately introducing disorder. Our findings open new directions in acoustics for advanced sound propagation and manipulation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Topological phases and nonreciprocal edge states in non-Hermitian Floquet Insulators

Topological phases in quantum and classical systems have been of significant recent interest due to their fascinating physical properties. While a range of different mechanisms to induce topological order have been introduced, a quest for the most viable solution for practical systems is still open. Floquet topological insulator represent one of possible venues to engineer topological phases, yet they have been so far largely restricted to temporal modulation of Hermitian potentials. On the other hand, in many physical systems, including acoustic and optical systems, modulating loss or gain can be more straightforwardly achieved. Two of such examples are graphene, which enables strong modulation of its conductivity due to saturable absorption, and quantum wells where population inversion can be achieved in an ultrafast manner. On the other hand, non-Hermitian Floquet potentials have not been shown to yield novel topological phases to date. It is therefore of great interest to explore time-modulated non-Hermitian potentials in periodic lattices, and the emergence of topological phases associated with them. Here we demonstrate that non-Hermitian Hamiltonians can indeed result in topological phases supporting nonreciprocal edge states propagating without dissipation, as well as new regimes of dissipative and amplifying topological edge transport.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Pseudospin-valley coupled edge states in a photonic topological insulator

Pseudo-spin and valley degrees of freedom (DOFs) engineered in photonic analogues of topological insulators (TI) provide potential approaches to optical encoding and robust signal transport. Here we observe a ballistic edge state whose spin-valley indices are locked to the direction of propagation along the interface between a valley photonic crystal and a metacrystal emulating the quantum spin Hall effect. We demonstrate the inhibition of inter-valley scattering at a Y-junction formed at the interfaces between photonic TIs carrying different spin-valley Chern numbers. These results open up the possibility of using the valley DOF to control the flow of optical signals in 2D structures.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2018

Exceptional points in topological edge spectrum of PT symmetric domain walls

We demonstrate that the non-Hermitian parity-time (PT) symmetric interfaces formed between amplifying and lossy crystals support dissipationless edge states. These PT edge states exhibit gapless spectra in the complex band structure interconnecting complex-valued bulk bands as long as exceptional points (EPs) of edge states exist. As a result, regimes exist where the edge states can spectrally overlap with the bulk continuum without hybridization, and leakage into the bulk states is suppressed due to the PT symmetry. Two exemplary PT symmetric systems, based on valley and quantum hall topological phases, are investigated, and the connection with the corresponding Hermitian systems is established. We find that the edge states smoothly transit to the valley edge states found in Hermitian systems if the magnitude of gain/loss vanishes. The topological nature of the PT edge states can be established within the non-Hermitian Haldane model, where the topological invariance is found to be unaffected by gain or loss. Nonreciprocal PT edge states are discovered at the interfaces between PT-Haldane phases, indicating the interplay between the gain/loss and the magnetic flux. The proposed systems are experimentally feasible to realize in photonics. This has been verified by our rigorous full-wave simulations of edge states in PT-symmetric silicon-based photonic graphene.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Spin and valley polarized one-way Klein tunneling in photonic topological insulators

Advances of condensed matter physics in exploiting the spin degree of freedom of electrons led to the emergence of the field of spintronics, which envisions new and more efficient approaches to data transfer, computing, and storage [1-3]. These ideas have been inspiring analogous approaches in photonics, where the manipulation of an artificially engineered pseudo-spin degrees of freedom is enabled by synthetic gauge fields acting on light [4,5,6]. The ability to control these additional degrees of freedom can significantly expand the landscape of available optical responses, which may revolutionize optical computing and the basic means of controlling light in photonic devices across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Here we demonstrate a new class of photonic systems, described by effective Hamiltonians in which competing synthetic gauge fields engineered in pseudo-spin, chirality/sublattice and valley subspaces result in band gap opening at one of the valleys, while the other valley exhibits Dirac-like conical dispersion. It is shown that such effective response has dramatic implications on photon transport, among which: (i) spin-polarized and valley-polarized one-way Klein tunneling and (ii) topological edge states that coexist within the Dirac continuum for opposite valley and spin polarizations. These phenomena offer new ways to control light in photonics, in particular for on-chip optical isolation, filtering and wave-division multiplexing by selective action on their pseudo-spin and valley degrees of freedom.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Controlling scattering of light through topological transitions in all-dielectric metasurfaces

Topological phase transitions in condensed matter systems have shown extremely rich physics, unveiling such exotic states of matter as topological insulators, superconductors and superfluids. Photonic topological systems open a whole new realm of research exhibiting a number of important distinctions from their condensed matter counterparts. Photonic modes can couple to the continuum of free space modes which makes it feasible to control and manipulate scattering properties of the photonic structure via topology. At the same time, the direct connection of scattering and topological properties of the photonic states allows their probing by spectroscopic means via Fano resonances. Here we demonstrate that the radiative coupling of modes supported by an all-dielectric metasurface can be controlled and tuned under topological phase transitions due to band inversion, correspondingly inducing a distinct switching of the quality factors of the resonances associated with the bands. In addition, we develop a technique to retrieve the topological properties of all-dielectric metasurfaces from the measured far-field scattering characteristics. The collected angle-resolved transmission and reflection spectra allow extracting the momentum-dependent frequencies and lifetimes of the photonic modes. This enables retrieval of the effective photonic Hamiltonian, including the effects of a synthetic gauge field, and topological invariants~-- pseudo-spin Chern numbers. Our results thus open a new avenue to design a new class of metasurfaces with unique scattering characteristics controlled via topological effects. This work also demonstrates how topological states of open systems can be explored via far-field measurements.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Rota-Baxter algebras, singular hypersurfaces, and renormalization on Kausz compactifications

We consider Rota-Baxter algebras of meromorphic forms with poles along a (singular) hypersurface in a smooth projective variety and the associated Birkhoff factorization for algebra homomorphisms from a commutative Hopf algebra. In the case of a normal crossings divisor, the Rota-Baxter structure simplifies considerably and the factorization becomes a simple pole subtraction. We apply this formalism to the unrenormalized momentum space Feynman amplitudes, viewed as (divergent) integrals in the complement of the determinant hypersurface. We lift the integral to the Kausz compactification of the general linear group, whose boundary divisor is normal crossings. We show that the Kausz compactification is a Tate motive and that the boundary divisor and the divisor that contains the boundary of the chain of integration are mixed Tate configurations. The regularization of the integrals that we obtain differs from the usual renormalization of physical Feynman amplitudes, and in particular it may give mixed Tate periods in some cases that have non-mixed Tate contributions when computed with other renormalization methods.

math-ph↗

arXiv2016

Three-Dimensional All-Dielectric Photonic Topological Insulator

The discovery of two-dimensional topological photonic systems has transformed our views on electromagnetic propagation and scattering of classical waves, and a quest for similar states in three dimensions, known to exist in condensed matter systems, has been put forward. Here we demonstrate that symmetry protected three-dimensional topological states can be engineered in an all-dielectric platform with the electromagnetic duality between electric and magnetic fields ensured by the structure design. Magneto-electric coupling playing the role of a synthetic gauge field leads to a topological transition to an insulating regime with a complete three-dimensional photonic bandgap. An emergence of surface states with conical Dirac dispersion and spin-locking is unimpeded. Robust propagation of surface states along two-dimensional domain walls defined by the reversal of magneto-electric coupling is confirmed numerically by first principle studies. It is shown that the proposed system represents a table-top platform for emulating relativistic physics of massive Dirac fermions and the surface states revealed can be interpreted as Jackiw-Rebbi states confined to the interface between two domains with opposite particle masses.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2013

Generalizations of the classical Yang-Baxter equation and O-operators

Tensor solutions ($r$-matrices) of the classical Yang-Baxter equation (CYBE) in a Lie algebra, obtained as the classical limit of the $R$-matrix solution of the quantum Yang-Baxter equation (QYBE), is an important structure appearing in different areas such as integrable systems, symplectic geometry, quantum groups and quantum field theory. Further study of CYBE led to its interpretation as certain operators, giving rise to the concept of O-operators. In [3], the O-operators were in turn interpreted as tensor solutions of CYBE by enlarging the Lie algebra. The purpose of this paper is to extend this study to a more general class of operators that were recently introduced [4] in the study of Lax pairs in integrable systems. Relationship between $\calo$-operators, relative differential operators and Rota-Baxter operators are also discussed.

math-ph↗

arXiv2013

Replicating of binary operads, Koszul duality, Manin products and average operators

We consider the notions of the replicators, including the duplicator and triplicator, of a binary operad. As in the closely related notions of di-Var-algebra and tri-Var-algebra in [14], they provide a general operadic definition for the recent constructions of replicating the operations of algebraic structures. We show that taking replicators is in Koszul dual to taking successors in [3] for binary quadratic operads and is equivalent to taking the white product with certain operads such as Perm. We also relate the replicators to the actions of average operators.

math.QA↗

arXiv2011

Splitting of operations, Manin products and Rota-Baxter operators

This paper provides a general operadic definition for the notion of splitting the operations of algebraic structures. This construction is proved to be equivalent to some Manin products of operads and it is shown to be closely related to Rota-Baxter operators. Hence, it gives a new effective way to compute Manin black products. The present construction is shown to have symmetry properties. Finally, this allows us to describe the algebraic structure of square matrices with coefficients in algebras of certain types. Many examples illustrate this text, including the case of Jordan algebras.

math.QA↗

arXiv2011

L-quadri-algebras

Quadri-algebras introduced by Aguiar and Loday are a class of remarkable Loday algebras. In this paper, we introduce a notion of L-quadri-algebra with 4 operations satisfying certain generalized left-symmetry, as a Lie algebraic analogue of quadri-algebra such that the commutator of the sum of the 4 operations is a Lie algebra. Any quadri-algebra is an L-quadri-algebra. Moreover, L-quadri-algebras fit into the framework of the relationships between Loday algebras and their Lie algebraic analogues, extending the well known fact that the commutator of an associative algebra is a Lie algebra. We also give the close relationships between L-quadri-algebras and some interesting structures like Rota-Baxter operators, classical Yang-Baxter equation, some bilinear forms satisfying certain conditions.

math-ph↗

arXiv2011

Some results on L-dendriform algebras

We introduce a notion of L-dendriform algebra due to several different motivations. L-dendriform algebras are regarded as the underlying algebraic structures of pseudo-Hessian structures on Lie groups and the algebraic structures behind the $\mathcal O$-operators of pre-Lie algebras and the related $S$-equation. As a direct consequence, they provide some explicit solutions of $S$-equation in certain pre-Lie algebras constructed from L-dendriform algebras. They also fit into a bigger framework as Lie algebraic analogues of dendriform algebras. Moreover, we introduce a notion of $\mathcal O$-operator of an L-dendriform algebra which gives an algebraic equation regarded as an analogue of the classical Yang-Baxter equation in a Lie algebra.

math-ph↗

arXiv2010

Special symplectic Lie groups and hypersymplectic Lie groups

A special symplectic Lie group is a triple $(G,ω,\nabla)$ such that $G$ is a finite-dimensional real Lie group and $ω$ is a left invariant symplectic form on $G$ which is parallel with respect to a left invariant affine structure $\nabla$. In this paper starting from a special symplectic Lie group we show how to ``deform" the standard Lie group structure on the (co)tangent bundle through the left invariant affine structure $\nabla$ such that the resulting Lie group admits families of left invariant hypersymplectic structures and thus becomes a hypersymplectic Lie group. We consider the affine cotangent extension problem and then introduce notions of post-affine structure and post-left-symmetric algebra which is the underlying algebraic structure of a special symplectic Lie algebra. Furthermore, we give a kind of double extensions of special symplectic Lie groups in terms of post-left-symmetric algebras.

math-ph↗

arXiv2010

O-operators on associative algebras and dendriform algebras

An O-operator is a relative version of a Rota-Baxter operator and, in the Lie algebra context, is originated from the operator form of the classical Yang-Baxter equation. We generalize the well-known construction of dendriform dialgebras and trialgebras from Rota-Baxter algebras to a construction from O-operators. We then show that this construction from O-operators gives all dendriform dialgebras and trialgebras. Furthermore there are bijections between certain equivalence classes of invertible O-operators and certain equivalence classes of dendriform dialgebras and trialgebras.

math.RA↗