Hyperbolic metamaterial empowered controllable photonic Weyl nodal line semimetals

Abstract Motivated by unique topological semimetals in condensed matter physics, we propose an effective Hamiltonian with four degrees of freedom to describe evolutions of photonic double Weyl nodal line semimetals in one-dimensional hyper-crystals, which supports the energy bands translating or rotating independently in the form of Weyl quasiparticles. Especially, owing to the unit cells without inversion symmetry, a pair of reflection-phase singularities carrying opposite topological charges emerge near each nodal line, and result in a unique bilateral drumhead surface state. After reducing radiation leakages and absorption losses, these two singularities gather together gradually, and form a quasi-bound state in the continuum (quasi-BIC) ring at the nodal line ultimately. Our work not only reports the first realization of controllable photonics Weyl nodal line semimetals, establishes a bridge between two independent topological concepts−BICs and Weyl semimetals, but also heralds new possibilities for unconventional device applications, such as dual-mode schemes for highly sensitive sensing and switching.