Surface wave manipulation with polar dielectric thin films and topological photonic system

Different from the well-studied wave propagation in the bulk where a plane wave extending to infinite is often conceived, the surface wave exists in the boundary defined by domains of distinct medium is well-confined with exponentially decaying tails away from this interface. This tightly-localized nature grants us enormous capability to manipulate the wave transport by tailoring the property of the interfaces and further enables various functionality for practical application. In this dissertation, a charged particle accelerator based on the surface phonon polaritons on the polar dielectric (silicon carbide) thin film is demonstrated to withstand high energy laser power and holds the promise of ultra-high accelerating gradiant in future experimental realization. The framework of wave propagation is then expanded beyond the homogenized medium to crystals with discrete periodicity which is referred as photonic crystals. The Bloch wave construct predicts that the topological insulator, a novel phenomenon in solid state physics, can be emulated by exquisite design of photonic system. Consequently, the surface waves (or edge states) between two topologically distinct photonic crystals exhibit robust and defect-immune wave transport which facilitates wide variety of applications. In particular, the RF delay line, polarized wave sorting, and two-beam accelerator based on the photonic topological insulator are investigated.