Topological edge modes in one-dimensional photonic crystals containing metal

2021 
Topological phases of matter has been developing rapidly in recent decades due to their unique topological edge states. In this paper, we analyze the surface modes of a one-dimensional periodic metal-vacuum multilayer structure and find that it can be seen as the optical analogy of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model. There are two symmetric and antisymmetric edge modes, whose fields are mainly concentrated on the two outermost interfaces. By introducing off-diagonal perturbation to some layers, we find that the edge modes are topologically protected, that is, have good robustness. However, the surface modes in the one-dimensional structure are not completely consistent with the SSH model, especially in the number of extended modes and the existence conditions of edge modes. As some extended modes are missing in our model, it can improve the coupling efficiency between atom and edge modes. Our results not only provide a new platform for the study of robust topological edge modes, but also have potential applications in information transmission, power transfer, and so on.
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