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Updated: Sep 6, 2025

Fabrication And Characterization Of Photonic Crystal Slow Light Waveguides And Cavities
Published on: November 30, 2012
Experimental Observation of Non-Abelian Earring Nodal Links in Phononic Crystals
Mudi Wang1, Shan Liu2, Qiyun Ma2
1Department of Physics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong 999077, China.
Abstract:
Nodal lines are symmetry-protected one-dimensional band degeneracies in momentum space, which can appear in numerous topological configurations such as nodal rings, chains, links, and knots. Very recently, non-Abelian topological physics have been proposed in space-time inversion (PT) symmetric systems. One of the most special configurations in such systems is the earring nodal link, composing of a nodal chain linking with an isolated nodal line. Such earring nodal links have not been observed in real systems. We designed phononic crystals with earring nodal links, and experimentally observed two different kinds of earring nodal links by measuring the band structures. We found that the order of the nodal chain and line can be switched after band inversion but their link cannot be severed. Our Letter provides experimental evidence for phenomena unique to non-Abelian band topology and our acoustic system provides a convenient platform for studying the new materials carrying non-Abelian charges.
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