Observation of boundary induced chiral anomaly bulk states and their transport properties.

Abstract

The most useful property of topological materials is perhaps the robust transport of topological edge modes, whose existence depends on bulk topological invariants. This means that we need to make volumetric changes to many atoms in the bulk to control the transport properties of the edges in a sample. We suggest here that we can do the reverse in some cases: the properties of the edge can be used to induce chiral transport phenomena in some bulk modes. Specifically, we show that a topologically trivial 2D hexagonal phononic crystal slab (waveguide) bounded by hard-wall boundaries guarantees the existence of bulk modes with chiral anomaly inside a pseudogap due to finite size effect. We experimentally observed robust valley-selected transport, complete valley state conversion, and valley focusing of the chiral anomaly bulk states (CABSs) in such phononic crystal waveguides. The same concept also applies to electromagnetics.