Higher-Order Topological States in Surface-Wave Photonic Crystals

Photonic topological states have revolutionized the understanding of the propagation and scattering of light. The recent discovery of higher-order photonic topological insulators opens an emergent horizon for 0D topological corner states. However, the previous realizations of higher-order topological insulators in electromagnetic-wave systems suffer from either a limited operational frequency range due to the lumped components involved or a bulky structure with a large footprint, which are unfavorable for achieving compact photonic devices. To overcome these limitations, a planar surface-wave photonic crystal realization of 2D higher-order topological insulators is hereby demonstrated experimentally. The surface-wave photonic crystals exhibit a very large bulk bandgap (a bandwidth of 28%) due to multiple Bragg scatterings and host 1D gapped edge states described by massive Dirac equations. The topology of those higher-dimensional photonic bands leads to the emergence of in-gap 0D corner states, which provide a route toward robust cavity modes for scalable compact photonic devices.