Pseudospin, an additional degree of freedom inherent in graphene, plays a key role in understanding many fundamental phenomena such as the anomalous quantum Hall effect, electron chirality and Klein paradox. Unlike the electron spin, the pseudospin was traditionally considered as an unmeasurable quantity, immune to Stern-Gerlach-type experiments. Recently, however, it has been suggested that graphene pseudospin is a real angular momentum that might manifest itself as an observable quantity, but so far direct tests of such a momentum remained unfruitful. Here, by selective excitation of two sublattices of an artificial photonic graphene, we demonstrate pseudospin-mediated vortex generation and topological charge flipping in otherwise uniform optical beams with Bloch momentum traversing through the Dirac points. Corroborated by numerical solutions of the linear massless Dirac-Weyl equation, we show that pseudospin can turn into orbital angular momentum completely, thus upholding the belief that pseudospin is not merely for theoretical elegance but rather physically measurable.

We report the first experimental demonstration of localized flat-band states in optically induced Kagome photonic lattices. Such lattices exhibit a unique band structure with the lowest band being completely flat (diffractionless) in the tight-binding approximation. By taking the advantage of linear superposition of the flat-band eigenmodes of the Kagome lattices, we demonstrate a high-fidelity transmission of complex patterns in such two-dimensional pyrochlore-like photonic structures. Our numerical simulations find good agreement with experimental observations, upholding the belief that flat-band lattices can support distortion-free image transmission.

We present a simple, yet effective, approach for optical induction of Lieb photonic lattices, which typically rely on the femtosecond laser writing technique. Such lattices are established by judiciously overlapping two sublattices (an “egg-crate” lattice and a square lattice) with different periodicities through a self-defocusing photorefractive medium. Furthermore, taking advantage of the superposition of localized flat-band states inherent in the Lieb lattices, we demonstrate distortion-free image transmission in such two-dimensional perovskite-like photonic structures. Our experimental observations find good agreement with numerical simulations.

Flatband systems typically host “compact localized states” (CLS) due to destructive interference and macroscopic degeneracy of Bloch wave functions associated with a dispersionless energy band. Using a photonic Lieb lattice (LL), such conventional localized flatband states are found to be inherently incomplete, with the missing modes manifested as extended line states that form noncontractible loops winding around the entire lattice. Experimentally, we develop a continuous-wave laser writing technique to establish a finite-sized photonic LL with specially tailored boundaries and, thereby, directly observe the unusually extended flatband line states. Such unconventional line states cannot be expressed as a linear combination of the previously observed boundary-independent bulk CLS but rather arise from the nontrivial real-space topology. The robustness of the line states to imperfect excitation conditions is discussed, and their potential applications are illustrated.

Flat‐band systems have attracted considerable interest in different branches of physics in the past decades, providing a flexible platform for studying fundamental phenomena associated with completely dispersionless bands within the whole Brillouin zone. Engineered flat‐band structures have now been realized in a variety of systems, in particular, in the field of photonics. Flat‐band localization, as an important phenomenon in solid‐state physics, is fundamentally interesting in the exploration of exotic ground‐state properties of many‐body systems. However, direct observation of some flat‐band phenomena is highly nontrivial in conventional condensed‐matter systems because of intrinsic limitations. In this article, we briefly review recent developments on flat‐band localization and the associated phenomena in various photonic lattices, including compact localized states, unconventional line states, and noncontractible loop states. We show that the photonic lattices offer a convenient platform for probing the underlying physics of flat‐band systems, which may provide inspiration for exploring the fundamentals and applications of flat‐band physics in other structured media from metamaterials to nanophotonic materials.

Topological properties of lattices are typically revealed in momentum space using concepts such as the Chern number. Here, we study unconventional loop states, namely, the noncontractible loop states (NLSs) and robust boundary modes, mediated by nontrivial topology in real space. While such states play a key role in understanding fundamental physics of flatband systems, their experimental observation has been hampered because of the challenge in realizing desired boundary conditions. Using a laser-writing technique, we optically establish photonic kagome lattices with both an open boundary by properly truncating the lattice, and a periodic boundary by shaping the lattice into a Corbino geometry. We thereby demonstrate the robust boundary modes winding around the entire edge of the open lattice and, more directly, the NLSs winding in a closed loop akin to that in a torus. We prove that the NLSs due to real-space topology persist in ideal Corbino-shaped kagome lattices of arbitrary size. Our results could be of great importance for our understanding of the singular flatbands and the intriguing physics phenomenon applicable for strongly interacting systems.