Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators

Understand

The topological insulator is a fundamentally new phase of matter, with the striking property that the conduction of electrons occurs only on its surface, not within the bulk, and that conduction is topologically protected.

• Topological protection, the total lack of scattering of electron waves by disorder, is perhaps the most fascinating and technologically important aspect of this material: it provides robustness that is otherwise known only for superconductors.
• However, unlike superconductivity and the quantum Hall effect, which necessitate low temperatures or magnetic fields, the immunity to disorder of topological insulators occurs at room temperature and without any external magnetic field.
• For this reason, topological protection is predicted to have wide-ranging applications in fault-tolerant quantum computing and spintronics.