A schematic of a topological insulator made with a photonic crystal and 2-D material (IMAGE)

University of Michigan

A schematic of a topological insulator made with a photonic crystal and 2-D material

Caption

Light conducts around the edge of a simulated topological insulator, shown at the bottom of image. The topological insulator is made from a layer of a 2-D material resting atop a photonic crystal. The red and blue insets illustrate how the light wave twists differently in two example isolated bands (selected from the band structures shown in the right panels) as it moves through the bulk crystal, giving rise to distinct curvature distributions and opposite nonzero Chern numbers.

Credit

X. Xie, K. Sun, H. Deng, Phys. Rev. X. 2025. DOI:10.1103/PhysRevX.15.021061

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License

CC BY

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