Non-Abelian braiding of light

Many topological phenomena first proposed and observed in the context of electrons in solids have recently found counterparts in photonic and acoustic systems. In this work, we demonstrate that non-Abelian Berry phases can arise when coherent states of light are injected into “topological guided modes” in specially-fabricated photonic waveguide arrays. These modes are photonic analogues of topological zero modes in electronic systems. Light traveling inside spatially well-separated topological guided modes can be braided, leading to the accumulation of non-Abelian phases, which depend on the order in which the guided beams are wound around one another. Notably, these effects survive the limit of large photon occupation, and can thus also be understood as wave phenomena arising directly from Maxwell’s equations, without resorting to the quantization of light. We propose an optical interference experiment as a direct probe of this non-Abelian braiding of light.