Quantized Hall drift in a frequency-encoded photonic Chern insulator

Abstract: The prospect of developing more efficient classical or quantum photonic devices through the suppression of backscattering is a major driving force for the field of topological photonics. However, genuine protection against backscattering in photonics requires implementing architectures with broken time-reversal which is technically challenging. Here, we make use of a frequency-encoded synthetic dimension scheme in an optical fibre loop platform to experimentally realise a photonic Chern insulator inspired from the Haldane model where time-reversal is explicitly broken through temporal modulation. The bands' topology is assessed by reconstructing the Bloch states' geometry across the Brillouin zone. We further highlight its consequences by measuring a driven-dissipative analogue of the quantized transverse Hall conductivity. Our results thus open the door to harnessing topologically protected unidirectional transport of light in frequency-multiplexed photonic systems.