Photonic axion insulator

IF 44.7 1区综合性期刊 Q1 MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES

Science Pub Date : 2025-01-09 DOI:10.1126/science.adr5234

Gui-Geng Liu, Subhaskar Mandal, Xiang Xi, Qiang Wang, Chiara Devescovi, Antonio Morales-Pérez, Ziyao Wang, Linyun Yang, Rimi Banerjee, Yang Long, Yan Meng, Peiheng Zhou, Zhen Gao, Yidong Chong, Aitzol García-Etxarri, Maia G. Vergniory, Baile Zhang

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Axions, hypothetical elementary particles that remain undetectable in nature, can arise as quasiparticles in three-dimensional crystals known as axion insulators. Previous implementations of axion insulators have largely been limited to two-dimensional systems, leaving their topological properties in three dimensions unexplored in experiment. Here, we realize an axion insulator in a three-dimensional photonic crystal and probe its topological properties. Demonstrated features include half-quantized Chern numbers on each surface that resembles a fractional Chern insulator, unidirectional chiral hinge states forming topological transport in three dimensions, and arithmetic operations between fractional and integer Chern numbers. Our work experimentally establishes the axion insulator as a three-dimensional topological phase of matter and enables chiral states to form complex, unidirectional three-dimensional networks through braiding.

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来源期刊

Science 综合性期刊-综合性期刊

CiteScore

61.10

自引率

0.90%

发文量

审稿时长

2.1 months

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