Numerical and experimental investigation of second-order mechanical topological insulators

Abstract

Recently, higher-order topological insulators (HOTIs) as a novel frontier of topological phases of matter have been induced in mechanical systems, opening new routes to manipulate the propagation of elastic waves. Here, second-order mechanical topological insulators (SMTIs) implemented by mechanical metamaterials are systematically investigated in the rectangular lattice, the kagome lattice, the square lattice and the hexagonal lattice. The mechanical metamaterials are constructed from the generalized 2D Su–Schrieffer–Heeger (SSH) models. The topological mechanical metamaterials are characterized by the theories of topological indices and Wannier centers. With simulations and experiments, the corner states and edge states are observed in the topological mechanical metamaterials. Interestingly, the numbers of corner, edge and bulk states are respectively equal to the number of sites located at the corners, edges and bulk. This work offers an inspiring and unified model to study the higher-order topology in mechanical systems, and provides a new way for designing functional and integrated topological devices.