Observation of Anderson phase in a topological photonic circuit

Abstract

Disordered systems play a central role in condensed matter physics, quantum transport, and topological photonics. It is commonly believed that a topological nontrivial phase would turn into a trivial phase where the transport vanishes under the effect of Anderson localization. Recent studies predict a counterintuitive result, that adding disorder to the trivial band structure triggers the emergence of protected edge states, the so-called topological Anderson phase. Here, we experimentally observe such a topological Anderson phase in a CMOS-compatible nanophotonic circuit, which implements the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model with incommensurate disorder in the intercell coupling amplitudes. The existence of the Anderson phase is verified by the spectral method, based on the continuous detection of the nanoscale light dynamics at the edge. Our results demonstrate the inverse transition between distinct topological phases in the presence of disorder, as well as offering a single-shot measurement technique to study the light dynamics in nanophotonic systems.