Topological Phenomena in Classical Optical Networks

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We propose a scheme to realize a topological insulator with optical-passive elements, and analyze the effects of Kerr-nonlinearities in its topological behavior.

• In the linear regime, our design gives rise to an optical spectrum with topological features and where the bandwidths and bandgaps are dramatically broadened.
• The resulting edge modes cover a very wide frequency range.
• We relate this behavior to the fact that the effective Hamiltonian describing the system's amplitudes is long-range.