All-Dielectric Tight-Binding Photonics via a Band-Gap Vacuum
Abstract
Tight-binding photonics bridges condensed-matter physics and optics, providing a powerful framework for engineering band structures and topological phases with light. For photons, however, the vacuum is gapless, so resonators in air carry radiative tails that produce spurious long-range couplings. Here we embed resonators in a photonic band-gap vacuum (BgV), a photonic crystal whose band gap plays for photons the role vacuum plays for bound electrons. The BgV localizes each resonance exponentially, so designed short-range couplings define the lattice Hamiltonian. We thereby experimentally realize a faithful Benalcazar-Bernevig-Hughes Hamiltonian in an all-dielectric photonic crystal, resolving corner resonances and their orbitals in microwave measurements. Unlike the vacuum surrounding electrons, the BgV is itself designable, controlling relative couplings and closed-loop interference through its band dispersion and Bloch modes. Full-wave calculations and extracted models show that uniformly modifying the BgV, with all resonators fixed, switches the quantized polarization of a two-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger lattice and converts a zero-flux lattice into a π-flux one. We also numerically realize three-dimensional pyrochlore and hyperhoneycomb lattices with space groups R3̅m and C2/c, the latter a nodal-loop semimetal with topological drumhead surface states. These results establish the BgV as a designable vacuum for all-dielectric tight-binding photonics in two and three dimensions.
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026alldielectric,
title = {{All-Dielectric Tight-Binding Photonics via a Band-Gap Vacuum}},
author = {Aodong Li and Jing Li and Tao Xiao and Biye Xie},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.25655},
eprint = {2610.25655},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25655},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - All-Dielectric Tight-Binding Photonics via a Band-Gap Vacuum
AU - Aodong Li
AU - Jing Li
AU - Tao Xiao
AU - Biye Xie
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.25655
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25655
AB - Tight-binding photonics bridges condensed-matter physics and optics, providing a powerful framework for engineering band structures and topological phases with light. For photons, however, the vacuum is gapless, so resonators in air carry radiative tails that produce spurious long-range couplings. Here we embed resonators in a photonic band-gap vacuum (BgV), a photonic crystal whose band gap plays for photons the role vacuum plays for bound electrons. The BgV localizes each resonance exponentially, so designed short-range couplings define the lattice Hamiltonian. We thereby experimentally realize a faithful Benalcazar-Bernevig-Hughes Hamiltonian in an all-dielectric photonic crystal, resolving corner resonances and their orbitals in microwave measurements. Unlike the vacuum surrounding electrons, the BgV is itself designable, controlling relative couplings and closed-loop interference through its band dispersion and Bloch modes. Full-wave calculations and extracted models show that uniformly modifying the BgV, with all resonators fixed, switches the quantized polarization of a two-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger lattice and converts a zero-flux lattice into a π-flux one. We also numerically realize three-dimensional pyrochlore and hyperhoneycomb lattices with space groups R3̅m and C2/c, the latter a nodal-loop semimetal with topological drumhead surface states. These results establish the BgV as a designable vacuum for all-dielectric tight-binding photonics in two and three dimensions.
ER -