Research Article Vol. 28, No. 4 / 17 February 2020 / Optics Express 4638
First-principle calculation of Chern number in
gyrotropic photonic crystals
RAN ZHAO,
1,2
GUO-DA XIE,
1,2
MENGLIN L. N. CHEN,
3
ZHIHAO
LAN,
4
ZHIXIANG HUANG,
1,2
AND WEI E. I. SHA
5,*
1
Key Laboratory of Intelligent Computing and Signal Processing, Ministry of Education, Anhui University,
Hefei 230039, China
2
Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Environmental Sensing, Department of Education of Anhui Province,
Hefei 230039, China
3
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
4
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, United Kingdom
5
Key Laboratory of Micro-nano Electronic Devices and Smart Systems of Zhejiang Province, College of
Information Science Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
*
weisha@zju.edu.cn
Abstract:
As an important figure of merit for characterizing the quantized collective behaviors
of the wavefunction, Chern number is the topological invariant of quantum Hall insulators.
Chern number also identifies the topological properties of the photonic topological insulators
(PTIs), thus it is of crucial importance in PTI design. In this paper, we develop a first principle
computatioal method for the Chern number of 2D gyrotropic photonic crystals (PCs), starting
from the Maxwell’s equations. Firstly, we solve the Hermitian generalized eigenvalue equation
reformulated from the Maxwell’s equations by using the full-wave finite-difference frequency-
domain (FDFD) method. Then the Chern number is obtained by calculating the integral of Berry
curvature over the first Brillouin zone. Numerical examples of both transverse-electric (TE) and
transverse-magnetic (TM) modes are demonstrated, where convergent Chern numbers can be
obtained using rather coarse grids, thus validating the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed
method.
© 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
1. Introduction
Topology studies the invariant properties of geometry under continuous deformation [1]. While
in mathematics, topological invariants are commonly used to classify topological spaces, in
topological physics, topological invariants are explored to distinguish the bulk properties of
materials. If physical observables can be expressed as topological invariants, they can only vary
discretely and will not be affected by small perturbations of system parameters.
With the discovery of the quantum Hall effects [2,3] and recent advances in the study of
topological insulators [4], topological phases of matter have attracted great attention in condensed
matter physics. In 2005, Haldane and Raghu transferred the key feature of quantum Hall effect
in quantum mechanics to classical electromagnetics [5] and soon after, it was numerically and
experimentally verified by using photonic crystals (PCs) [6,7].
Chern number in a photonic system is defined on the dispersion bands in wave-vector space.
For a two-dimensional (2D) periodic system, the Chern number is the integration of the Berry
curvature over the first Brillouin zone. Once the Chern number is calculated, the topological
properties of the system can be identified (trivial or non-trivial). In addition, the Chern number
can be used to explain the phenomenon of “topological protection” of the edge state transmission
in photonic topological insulators (PTIs). Therefore, the accurate computation of the Chern
number is of crucial importance in the PTI design [8–10].
#380077 https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.380077
Journal © 2020 Received 13 Oct 2019; revised 21 Jan 2020; accepted 21 Jan 2020; published 4 Feb 2020
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