Quadrupole Topological Photonic Crystals

Quadrupole topological phases, exhibiting protected boundary states that are themselves topological insulators of lower dimensions, have recently been of great interest. Extensions of these ideas from current tight binding models to continuum theories for realistic materials require the identification of quantized invariants describing the bulk quadrupole order. Here we identify the analog of quadrupole order in Maxwell’s equations for a photonic crystal (PhC). Unlike prior studies relying on threaded flux, our quadrupole moment is quantized purely by crystalline symmetries. Furthermore, through the bulk-edge correspondence of Wannier bands, we reveal the boundary manifestations of nontrivial quadrupole phases as quantized polarizations at edges and bound states at corners. Finally, we relate the nontrivial corner states to the emergent phenomena of quantized fractional corner charges and a filling anomaly.