Light-Matter interactions in Hofstadter lattice with the next-nearest neighbor couplings

The light-mater interactions for an emitter coupling to the bulk region of a Hofstadter lattice has recently investigated by De Bernardis $\mathit{\text{et}}\mathit{\text{al.}}$ [D. De Bernardis, Z.-P. Cian, I. Carusotto, M. Hafezi, and P. Rabl, \href{https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.103603}{Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 103603 (2021)}]. We propose the light-mater interactions in an extended Hofstadter lattice with the next-nearest neighbor (NNN) couplings. Compared with the standard Hofstadter lattice, the NNN couplings break the mirror symmetry and the energy bands are not flat, i.e., dispersive with nonzero group velocity. In contrast to the study by De Bernardis $\mathit{\text{et}}\mathit{\text{al.}}$, when a two-level emitter interacts with the bulk region of extended Hofstadter lattice, the emitter is no longer tapped by the coherent oscillations with the flat band, and can radiate photons unidirectional. The chiral mechanism stems from the broken parity symmetry. Both the radiation rate and the chirality periodically change with the emitter’s coupling position. All of those particular features can be realized on the photonic lattice platform and may find potential application in chiral quantum information processing.