Edge States and Topological Phase Transitions in Chains of Dielectric Nanoparticles

Recently introduced field of topological photonics aims to explore the concepts of topological insulators for novel phenomena in optics. Here polymeric chains of subwavelength silicon nanodisks are studied and it is demonstrated that these chains can support two types of topological edge modes based on magnetic and electric Mie resonances, and their topological properties are fully dictated by the spatial arrangement of the nanoparticles in the chain. It is observed experimentally and described how theoretically topological phase transitions at the nanoscale define a change from trivial to nontrivial topological states when the edge mode is excited.