TY - JOUR T1 - Topological Edge Mode Tapering Y1 - 2022 A1 - Christopher J. Flower A1 - Sabyasachi Barik A1 - Sunil Mittal A1 - Mohammad Hafezi AB -

Mode tapering, or the gradual manipulation of the size of some mode, is a requirement for any system that aims to efficiently interface two or more subsystems of different mode sizes. While high efficiency tapers have been demonstrated, they often come at the cost of a large device footprint or challenging fabrication. Topological photonics, offering robustness to certain types of disorder as well as chirality, has proved to be a well-suited design principle for numerous applications in recent years. Here we present a new kind of mode taper realized through topological bandgap engineering. We numerically demonstrate a sixfold change in mode width over an extremely compact 8μm distance with near unity efficiency in the optical domain. With suppressed backscattering and no excitation of higher-order modes, such a taper could enable new progress in the development of scalable, multi-component systems in classical and quantum optics.

UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.07056 ER -