Tunable topological valley Hall edge state based on large optical Kerr effect

Abstract

Most of the photonic valley-Hall edge states were constructed by changing structures to break the spatial inversion symmetry, restricting the practical application potential. In this paper, we construct a tunable topological valley-Hall edge state based on the large optical Kerr effect. It is demonstrated that topological phase transition happens by engineering the intensity of the injected pump and that a valley-Hall edge state can be generated at the interface between two regions with different topological properties. In addition, eigenfrequency and transmission characteristics of the edge state as a function of applied pump intensity are investigated. The topological protected valley-dependent transmission is studied under non-uniform distributed pump intensity. This work may open a new path toward designing reconfigurable all-optical metadevices.