Influence of bias magnetic field direction on band structure of magnetic photonic crystal and its role in constructing topological edge states

The topological transitions in two-dimensional photonic crystals (PCs) originate from the opening-closing-reopening of the bandgap, accompanied with the band order inversion. The topological bandgap in magnetic PC can be created by applying a bias magnetic field or deforming the geometry structure of the PC. In this paper, we demonstrate that the direction of the bias magnetic field also plays a key role in modifying the band structure in a two-dimensional magnetic PC. The results show that by reversing the direction of the bias magnetic field, the eigenstates with the same parity may exchange their orders in the band structure. We investigate this type of band order exchange in the applications of constructing topological edge states and its influence on the properties of edge states. We find, for example, reversing the direction of the bias magnetic field can create two almost degenerated topological edge modes, which propagate in the same direction but have opposite orbital angular momenta. The edge modes and their characteristics can be determined by the schematics of the band orders for the photonic crystals on the two sides of the boundary. The relative relationship of the band orders determines the emergence of the topological edge states, the number of edge states, and edge modes’ properties such as the orbital angular momentum and group velocity. Also, it affects the transmission efficiency of the electromagnetic wave on the boundary. The direction effect of the bias magnetic field on band order exchange presented in this paper provides us with a new way to change the feature of topological edge states and helps us to better understand the influence of band order on topological phases of photonic crystals. It may have potential applications, such as in pseudo-spin splitter and reflection-free one-way optical switch.