Topological isolator as a multiplexer. Credit: Zhe Zhang / EPFL 2021
EPFL scientists have developed a topology-based method that forces microwave photons to travel along a path, despite unprecedented levels of disorder and obstacles on their way.
Topological insulators are materials whose structure forces photons and electrons to move only along the material’s boundary and only in one direction. These particles experience very little resistance and travel freely past obstacles such as impurities, fabrication defects, a change of signal’s trajectory within a circuit, or objects placed intentionally in the particles’ path. That’s because these particles, instead of being reflected …
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