Observation of Unidirectional s-p Orbital Topological Edge States in Driven Photonic Lattices

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08914v1
• Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2026 19:00:16 GMT
• Title: Observation of Unidirectional s-p Orbital Topological Edge States in Driven Photonic Lattices
• Authors: Gayathry Rajeevan, Sebabrata Mukherjee,
• Abstract summary: We demonstrate higher-orbital Floquet topological insulators by introducing periodically modulated couplings.<n>The staggered phase of the $s$-$p$ couplings gives rise to a synthetic uniform $$ magnetic flux per plaquette of the lattice.<n>Our results open a promising pathway for exploring topological phenomena by introducing the orbital degree of freedom.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Time-periodic modulation of a static system is a powerful method for realizing robust unidirectional topological states. So far, all such realizations have been based on interactions among $s$ orbitals, without incorporating inter-orbital couplings. Here, we demonstrate higher-orbital Floquet topological insulators by introducing periodically modulated couplings between the optical $s$ and $p$ orbitals in a square lattice. The staggered phase of the $s$-$p$ couplings gives rise to a synthetic uniform $π$ magnetic flux per plaquette of the lattice, and periodic driving of the couplings opens a topological bandgap, characterized by the Floquet winding number. We image topological edge modes of $s$-$p$ orbitals traveling unidirectionally around a corner. Here, the topological phases are realized by a combined effect of the periodic driving and synthetic magnetic flux. Consequently, when the synthetic flux is turned off, the system becomes trivial over a range of driving parameters. Our results open a promising pathway for exploring topological phenomena by introducing the orbital degree of freedom.

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