Band structure and topological phase transition of photonic time crystals

Opt Express. 2019 Apr 29;27(9):12914-12922. doi: 10.1364/OE.27.012914.

Abstract

We investigate the band structure and topological phase transition of photonic time crystals (PTC)-systems in which the physical parameter varies periodically in time. We find that the topological phase transition of the PTC system can be revealed by the wave vector gap (k-gap) size, which was induced by the temporal refraction and reflection. Interestingly, a temporal zero-averaged refractive index k-gap is obtained when the PTC system includes a dispersive medium. This special k-gap is invariant with modulation time scaling at a given modulation frequency.