Realization of all-band-flat photonic lattices

Jing Yang; Yuanzhen Li; Yumeng Yang; Xinrong Xie; Zijian Zhang; Jiale Yuan; Han Cai; Da-Wei Wang; Fei Gao

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-45580-w

Realization of all-band-flat photonic lattices

Nat Commun. 2024 Feb 19;15(1):1484. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-45580-w.

Authors

Jing Yang^{1

2

3}, Yuanzhen Li^{2

3}, Yumeng Yang^{2

3}, Xinrong Xie^{2

3}, Zijian Zhang^{2

3}, Jiale Yuan¹, Han Cai^{1

4}, Da-Wei Wang^{5

6

7}, Fei Gao^{8

9

10}

Affiliations

¹ Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, School of Physics, and State Key Laboratory for Extreme Photonics and Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
² ZJU-Hangzhou Global Science and Technology Innovation Center, College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
³ International Joint Innovation Center, Key Laboratory of Advanced Micro/Nano Electronic Devices & The Electromagnetics Academy at Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University, Haining, China.
⁴ College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁵ Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, School of Physics, and State Key Laboratory for Extreme Photonics and Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. dwwang@zju.edu.cn.
⁶ College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. dwwang@zju.edu.cn.
⁷ CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. dwwang@zju.edu.cn.
⁸ Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, School of Physics, and State Key Laboratory for Extreme Photonics and Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. gaofeizju@zju.edu.cn.
⁹ ZJU-Hangzhou Global Science and Technology Innovation Center, College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. gaofeizju@zju.edu.cn.
¹⁰ International Joint Innovation Center, Key Laboratory of Advanced Micro/Nano Electronic Devices & The Electromagnetics Academy at Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University, Haining, China. gaofeizju@zju.edu.cn.

Abstract

Flatbands play an important role in correlated quantum matter and have promising applications in photonic lattices. Synthetic magnetic fields and destructive interference in lattices are traditionally used to obtain flatbands. However, such methods can only obtain a few flatbands with most bands remaining dispersive. Here we realize all-band-flat photonic lattices of an arbitrary size by precisely controlling the coupling strengths between lattice sites to mimic those in Fock-state lattices. This allows us to go beyond the perturbative regime of strain engineering and group all eigenmodes in flatbands, which simultaneously achieves high band flatness and large usable bandwidth. We map out the distribution of each flatband in the lattices and selectively excite the eigenmodes with different chiralities. Our method paves a way in controlling band structure and topology of photonic lattices.

Grants and funding

62171406/National Natural Science Foundation of China (National Science Foundation of China)