Topological transport in heterostructure of valley photonic crystals

Abstract

We propose a heterogeneous structure, which are composed of two valley photonic crystals (VPCs) with opposite valley Chern numbers and air channel. With the increasing width of the air channel, valley-locked waveguide modes are found in topological bandgap by analyzing energy bands. Finite element method (FEM) simulation results show that the fundamental and high order modes are valley-locked, propagating unidirectionally under the excitation of chiral source, and possess higher flux compared to the valley-locked topological edge state in the domain wall. Besides, the immunity to backscattering in bend and couplers, and the robustness to random disorders are discussed in detail. We also investigate the one-way multimode interference (MMI) effect based on valley-locked waveguide modes, and design topological beam splitters. Our study provides a novel idea for topological transport with high flux, and more freedom to design valley-locked waveguide devices, including bends, couplers and splitters.