Photonic helicoid-like surface states in chiral metamaterials

Abstract

We investigate the photonic topological phases in chiral metamaterials characterized by the magnetoelectric tensors with diagonal chirality components. The underlying medium is considered a photonic analogue of the topological semimetal featured with a Weyl cone and a cylindrical surface in the frequency-wave vector space. As the ’spin’-degenerate condition is satisfied, the photonic system can be rearranged as two hybrid modes that are completely decoupled. By introducing the pseudospin states as the basis for the hybrid modes, the photonic system is described by two subsystems in the form of spin-orbit Hamiltonians of spin 1, which result in nonzero spin Chern numbers that determine the topological properties. Surface modes at the interface between vacuum and the chiral metamaterial exist in their common gap in the wave vector space, which are analytically formulated by algebraic equations. In particular, the surface modes form a pair of spiral surface sheets wrapping around the Weyl cone, resembling the helicoid surface states that occur in topological semimetals. At the Weyl frequency, the surface modes contain two Fermi arc-like states that concatenate to yield a straight line segment.