Polarization-controlled Floquet engineering in twisted photonic lattices
Abstract
Floquet engineering has emerged as a powerful approach for both classical and quantum systems, enabling versatile exploration of synthetic dimensions, topological phases, and quantum information processing. Further advances, however, require precise and continuous control over both the magnitude and sign of the coupling coefficient. Although static modal-engineering approaches can tune both, existing Floquet photonic platforms typically rely on geometric modulation, auxiliary structures, or phase engineering. Continuous tuning of the coupling coefficient in both magnitude and sign within a Floquet period therefore remains challenging. Here, we present a compact Floquet platform based on twisted photonic waveguide arrays, in which the twist-induced variation of the relative polarization angle between adjacent waveguides directly tunes the coupling coefficient through zero, allowing continuous access to positive and negative values with different magnitudes. To highlight the core capability of the platform, we focus on representative driven phenomena in both one- and two-dimensional lattices: Floquet flat bands and the associated period-n Λ Λ oscillations in one-dimensional lattices, as well as chirality reversal of topological edge states in two-dimensional lattices.
Related
- Phase-controlled transport of Floquet-driven compact chiral photonic states
- Quantitative spin-orbit engineering enables subwavelength-scale programmable polarization states for versatile photonic functionalities
- Temporal chirality in Floquet photonic media
- Floquet-driven light transport in programmable photonic processors via discretized evolution of synthetic magnetic fields
- Floquet-Volkov spin polarization in spin-degenerate Antiferromagnets
BibTeX
@article{gao2026polarizationcontrolled,
title = {{Polarization-controlled Floquet engineering in twisted photonic lattices}},
author = {Jinze Gao and Guibin Li and Zhuochen Du and Kun Liao and Kunyu Yu and C. T. Chan and Ruo-Yang Zhang and Daopeng Yuan and Yan Zhang and Xiaoyong Hu and Qihuang Gong},
journal = {Nature Communications},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-78660-0},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-78660-0},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Polarization-controlled Floquet engineering in twisted photonic lattices
AU - Jinze Gao
AU - Guibin Li
AU - Zhuochen Du
AU - Kun Liao
AU - Kunyu Yu
AU - C. T. Chan
AU - Ruo-Yang Zhang
AU - Daopeng Yuan
AU - Yan Zhang
AU - Xiaoyong Hu
AU - Qihuang Gong
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
JO - Nature Communications
DO - 10.1038/s41467-026-78660-0
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-78660-0
AB - Floquet engineering has emerged as a powerful approach for both classical and quantum systems, enabling versatile exploration of synthetic dimensions, topological phases, and quantum information processing. Further advances, however, require precise and continuous control over both the magnitude and sign of the coupling coefficient. Although static modal-engineering approaches can tune both, existing Floquet photonic platforms typically rely on geometric modulation, auxiliary structures, or phase engineering. Continuous tuning of the coupling coefficient in both magnitude and sign within a Floquet period therefore remains challenging. Here, we present a compact Floquet platform based on twisted photonic waveguide arrays, in which the twist-induced variation of the relative polarization angle between adjacent waveguides directly tunes the coupling coefficient through zero, allowing continuous access to positive and negative values with different magnitudes. To highlight the core capability of the platform, we focus on representative driven phenomena in both one- and two-dimensional lattices: Floquet flat bands and the associated period-n Λ Λ oscillations in one-dimensional lattices, as well as chirality reversal of topological edge states in two-dimensional lattices.
SN - 2041-1723
ER -