Giant topological magnetoelectric and optical Hall effects for topological insulator as a defect in photonic crystal

Peng Wang, Qin Liu, Wei Li, Xunya Jiang

Published 2011-01-25Version 1

A system with a topological insulator slab sandwiched by two one-dimensional photonic crystals as a defect is investigated. A giant topological magnetoelectric effect is proposed which is characterized by two resonant peaks with half-unit transmissions and rich polarization behaviors in the photonic band gap. We also predict a giant optical Hall effect in our system, in which the transverse shift of the transmitted light could be thousand times larger than the wavelength. These effects are purely from the $\Theta$-domain walls at the topological insulator interfaces and could be observed easily. These effects can also be used as the sensitive detection of basic physical constants.