Liquid crystal based photonic topological insulators

Topological photonics harness the physics of topological insulators to control the behavior of light. An example of such control is to find modes of a photonic system that are robust against material imperfections. In this talk, we propose to use a soft-matter platform based on liquid crystals to implement some classes of photonic topological insulators. In such systems, the spatial orientation of the molecules introduces an extra geometric degree of freedom which in conjunction with suitably designed structural properties leads to the creation of topologically protected states of light. The use of soft building blocks potentially allows for reconfigurable systems that exploit the interplay between light and the soft responsive medium.