Originating from the discovery of the quantum Hall effect in the 1980s, the study of topological phases of matter have received sustained attention in the past few decades. Due to its universal nature, this field has expanded into new and exciting areas, particularly ultracold atomic gases and optics.
The implementation of topological states and their physical parameters in these new areas differ significantly from those in electronic materials explored in the pioneer studies. For instance, the extreme dilution and ultralow temperatures of atomic gases result in much longer timescales for dynamical processes, offering unique experimental opportunities. Current techniques allow researchers to monitor non-equilibrium processes driven by coherent quantum dynamics with exceptionally high temporal resolution and perform rapid parameter switches (quenches) to initiate various dynamical processes. These experimental advantages provide powerful platforms to explore topological dynamics in ultracold atomic gases and optical systems, including topological phase transitions, Floquet topological phases, quantized transport, and nonlinear phenomena. Moreover, these settings enable the creation and study of diverse topological states, such as vortices, vortex solitons, hopfions, skyrmions, and topological insulators, offering insights into their fundamental properties and potential applications.
We expect this special issue will provide a comprehensive overview of the latest achievements and advancements in this field, offering readers high-quality research contributions. We warmly invite theoretical and experimental research groups, as well as individual authors, to submit original research articles and reviews to the special issue. While there are no strict length restrictions for articles, reviews should have a minimum length of 15 pages. Publication fees will be waived for all contributors, and all articles published online will be freely available for download. The submission deadline is October 31, 2025. Authors who require an extension are kindly requested to inform us in advance.
We look forward to receiving your submission.
Sincerely,
Vladimir V. Konotop, University of Lisbon, E-mail: vvkonotop@ciencias.ulisboa.pt
Yongyao Li, Foshan University, E-mail: yongyaoli@gmail.com
Boris Malomed, Tel Aviv University, E-mail: malomed@tauex.tau.ac.il
An edge soliton is a localized bound state that arises from the balance between diffraction broadening and nonlinearity-induced self-focusing. It typically resides either at the edge or at the domain wall of a lattice system. To the best of our knowledge, most reported edge solitons have been observed in conservative Hermitian systems; whether stable edge solitons can exist in non-Hermitian systems remains an open question. In this work, we utilize a photonic lattice that naturally exhibits type-II Dirac cones and introduce a domain wall by carefully configuring gains and losses at the three sites within each unit cell. Surprisingly, edge states localized at the domain wall can exhibit entirely real propagation constants. Building on these edge states, we demonstrate the existence of edge solitons that can propagate stably over distances significantly exceeding those in the experimental settings adopted in this study. Although these solitons eventually couple with the bulk states and ultimately collapse, they exhibit remarkable resilience. Our findings establish that a domain wall supporting loss-resistant edge solitons, which can also evade the skin effect, is achievable in non-Hermitian systems. This discovery holds promising potential for the development of compact functional optical devices.
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