|
The landmark discovery of photonic topological insulators has opened a unique route for disorder-immune light transport with unprecedented possibilities of practical applications. Flexible reconfiguration of topological light pathways can enable a completely new paradigm for high-density photonics routing, sustaining the growing demand for data capacity. By strategically interfacing non-Hermitian and topological physics, we demonstrate arbitrary robust light steering in reconfigurable non-Hermitian junctions, where novel chiral non-Hermitian topological states can propagate at an interface of the gain and loss domains. In contrast to previously studied topological states confined only at the static boundary/interface of the structure, the new non-Hermitian-controlled topological state can enable robust transmission links of light inside the bulk, fully utilizing the entire footprint of a photonic topological insulator.
|
