[Seminar] Photon Spin Quantization in New Bosonic Phases of Matter by Professor Jacob Zubin

Abstract:

We present topological symmetries of the electromagnetic vacuum and connection to bosonic topological insulators for light. We exploit the correspondence between Dirac’s equation and Maxwell’s equation to predict the existence of a spin-1 bosonic topological insulator. We will discuss a photonic Dirac monopole present in vacuum and map its conserved topological quantum numbers to a continuous photonic medium. Our DiracMaxwell theory to understand topological properties of photons, integer spin bosons, marks a shift in approach from existing Schrodinger-Maxwell analogies. We show the time-reversal symmetry protected edge states of a bosonic topological insulator which have open boundary conditions, unlike any known surface electromagnetic state. Our work shows that a degenerate optical chiral medium, if found in nature, would be the best candidate for a spin-1 bosonic topological insulator [1,2,3].

[1] Universal spin-momentum locking of evanescent waves, T Van Mechelen, Z Jacob, Optica 3 (2), 118-126 (2016) 

[2] Dirac-Maxwell correspondence: Spin-1 bosonic topological insulator, T Van Mechelen, Z Jacob, arXiv:1708.08192 (2017)

[3]  Photon spin-1 quantization in continuuum topological bosonic phases, T. Van Mechelen, Z. Jacob , arXiv:1806.01395 (2018)
 

Bio:

Dr. Jacob completed his Ph.D. from Purdue University (2010) and his M.S.E.E. from Princeton University (2007) and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. Dr. Jacob was previously at the University of Alberta, Canada, where he was an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and has also been a visiting faculty member at the International Center for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. He is the winner of the NSF CAREER award 2017, DARPA Young Faculty award 2017 and Purdue ECE outstanding graduate student mentor award 2018.