Experimental observation of topologically protected bound states in two dimensional quantum walk

摘要

Quantum walks (QWs) provide a powerful tool as a quantum simulator to study topological phases. However, some interesting topological phenomena in the two dimensional (2D) QW that do not exist in the one dimensional case, e.g., the edge-state-enhanced transport, have not been demonstrated experimentally. Here we have observed 2D topological bound states with vanishing Chern numbers and confirmed the robustness of these bound states with respect to perturbations and disorder, which go beyond what has been known in static systems and are unique to periodically driven systems. Our studies open up an avenue to explore topological properties in multidimensional QWs.