Photonic Floquet topological insulators in atomic ensembles

Abstract

We demonstrate the photonic Floquet topological insulator (PFTI) in an atomic vapor with nonlinear susceptibilities. The interference of three coupling fields splits the energy levels periodically to form a periodic refractive index structure with honeycomb symmetry that can be adjusted by the choice of frequency detunings and intensities of the coupling fields, which all affect the appearance of Dirac cones in the momentum space. When the honeycomb lattice sites are helically ordered along the propagation direction, we obtain a PFTI in the atomic vapor in which an obliquely incident beam moves along the zigzag edge without scattering energy into the PFTI, due to the confinement of the edge states. The appearance of Dirac cones and the formation of PFTI is strongly affected by the nonlinear susceptibilities; i.e. the PFTI can be shut off by the third-order nonlinear susceptibility and re-opened up by the fifth-order one.