1211.4476 (Mor Verbin et al.)

Observation of Topological Phase Transitions in Photonic Quasicrystals    [PDF]

Mor Verbin, Yaacov E. Kraus, Oded Zilberberg, Yoav Lahini, Yaron Silberberg

Topological insulators and topological superconductors are distinguished by their bulk phase transitions and gapless states at a sharp boundary with the vacuum. Quasicrystals have recently been found to be topologically nontrivial. In quasicrystals, the bulk phase transitions occur in the same manner as standard topological materials, but their boundary phenomena are more subtle. In this work we directly observe bulk phase transitions, using photonic quasicrystals, by constructing a smooth boundary between topologically-distinct one-dimensional quasicrystals. Moreover, we use the same method to experimentally verify the topological equivalence between the Harper and Fibonacci quasicrystals.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.4476