Analysis of Unidirectional Coupling in Topological Valley Photonic Crystal Waveguides

Abstract

Valley photonic crystal is a typical strategy of topological photonics with promising applications for novel integrated waveguides. The valley pseudospin provides an intrinsic paradigm to implement unidirectional coupling with robustly optical transport. But the key issue on the analysis of unidirectional coupling based on topological modes is lack of deep understanding on valley photonic crystals. In this work, we systematically study the mechanism and performance of unidirectional coupling between valley photonic crystal waveguides and chiral dipole emitters. Forming by two topologically-distinct valley photonic crystals, there are two types of valley-interface waveguides, i.e. bearded stack with glide-plane symmetry and zigzag stack with inversion symmetry. Analytical derivation shows that the Stokes parameters of topological eigenmodes can predict the directionality in the above two types of valley-interface waveguides, which is also confirmed by full-wave simulations. The strategy of bearded valley-interface waveguide can be easier to achieve high efficiency of unidirectional coupling than the zigzag case, and can relax the bias error of frequency and source location. It is also proved that the topological-protected unidirectional coupling supports robust transport against sharp-bending interface. Finally, we give a brief summary and perspective in the development of topological integrated photonics. This work gives a deterministic guidance on chiral light-matter interaction based on topological photonics, as well as shows the outlook of topological integrated photonics.