Z₂ Photonic Topological Insulators in the Visible Wavelength Range for Robust Nanoscale Photonics

Topological photonics provides an ideal platform for demonstrating novel band topology concepts, which are also promising for robust waveguiding, communication, and computation applications. However, many challenges such as extremely large device footprint and functionality at short wavelengths remain to be solved which are required to make practical and useful devices that can also couple to electronic excitations in many important organic and inorganic semiconductors. In this letter, we report an experimental realization of Z₂ photonic topological insulators with their topological edge state energies spanning across the visible wavelength range including in the sub-500 nm regime, which requires highly optimized nanofabrication. The photonic structures are based on deformed hexagonal lattices with preserved 6-fold rotational symmetry patterned on suspended SiN membranes. The experimentally measured energy-momentum dispersion of the topological lattices directly shows topological band inversion by the swapping of the brightness of the bulk energy bands, and also the helical edge states when the measurement is taken near the topological interface. The robust topological transport of the helical edge modes in real space is demonstrated by successfully guiding circularly polarized light beams unidirectionally through sharp kinks without significant signal loss. This work paves the way for small footprint photonic topological devices working in the short wavelength range that can also be utilized to couple to excitons for unconventional light-matter interactions at the nanoscale.