Photonic topological phases in Tellegen metamaterials.

Abstract

We investigate the photonic topological phases in Tellegen metamaterials characterized by the antisymmetric magnetoelectric tensors with real-valued quantities. The underlying medium is considered a photonic analogue of the topological semimetal featured with a displaced Weyl cone in the frequency-wave vector space. As the 'spin'-degenerate condition is satisfied, the photonic system consists of 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 terms of the spin-orbit Hamiltonians with spin 1, which result in nonzero spin Chern numbers that determine the topological properties. Surface modes at the interface between two Tellegen metamaterials with opposite sign of the magnetoelectric parameter exist at their common gap in the wave vector space, which are analytically formulated by algebraic equations. In particular, two types of surface modes are tangent to or wrapping around the Weyl cones, which form a pair of bended and a pair of twisted surface sheets. At the Weyl frequency, the surface modes contain a typical and two open Fermi arc-like states that concatenate to yield an infinite straight line. Topological features of the Tellegen metamaterials are further illustrated with the robust transport of surface modes at an irregular boundary.