Customizing acoustic and electromagnetic unidirectional states in phoxonic topological insulators

Abstract

Topological materials for classical waves offer remarkable potential in applications such as sensing, waveguiding and signal processing, leveraging topological protection effects like strong robustness, immunity to backscattering and unidirectional transmission. This work presents the simultaneous inverse design of pseudospin-dependent topological edge states for acoustic and electromagnetic waves in two-dimensional $C_{\text{6v}}$ phoxonic crystals. The phoxonic crystals are created by arranging the silicon columns periodically in the air background. We propose a multi-objective optimization framework based on the NSGA-II collaborated with the finite element approach, where the bandgaps of acoustic and electromagnetic waves are treated separately as the objective values. The topological nature of bandgaps is determined by analyzing the positional relationships of paired degenerate modes through the modal field calculations, enabling the customization of one of the two bandgaps within the same unit cell. Unlike traditional approaches relying on the band inversion to induce topological phase transitions, the proposed approach directly generates a pair of unit cells with distinct topological properties for both wave types, achieving the maximum bandgap matching in each case. We further demonstrate the existence of the pseudospin-dependent topological edge states for both acoustic and electromagnetic waves, verifying their unidirectionality and robustness against backscattering and defects. This work establishes a systematic strategy for customizing phoxonic topological states, offering a new avenue for the inverse design of multi-functional devices based on both sound and light.