Instability of bosonic topological edge states in the presence of interactions

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Instability of bosonic topological edge states in the presence of interactions

Yaakov Lumer, Mikael C. Rechtsman, Yonatan Plotnik, and Mordechai Segev

Phys. Rev. A 94, 021801(R) – Published 3 August 2016

Abstract

We analyze the stability of extended edge modes in a nonlinear (i.e., interacting) bosonic topological insulator. We see that these nonlinear modes are always unstable, despite the topological protection of edge modes in the linear system. For concreteness we use a photonic platform, but the results generalize to other bosonic systems. We give a detailed description of the system in two extreme cases, low nonlinearity and high nonlinearity, and discuss the breakup of the nonlinear edge states into solitons.

Received 21 March 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.94.021801

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Optical solitons

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Yaakov Lumer¹, Mikael C. Rechtsman², Yonatan Plotnik¹, and Mordechai Segev¹

¹Physics Department, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
²Physics Department, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA

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Issue

Vol. 94, Iss. 2 — August 2016

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