Observing Zitterbewegung for photons near the Dirac point of a two-dimensional photonic crystal

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the first observation of photon Zitterbewegung near the Dirac point in a 2D photonic crystal, highlighting its experimental accessibility and potential for broad frequency applications.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental confirmation of photon Zitterbewegung near the Dirac point in a 2D photonic crystal, using numerical simulations.

Findings

Photon Zitterbewegung can occur near the Dirac point in 2D photonic crystals.

The phenomenon can be observed across various structures and frequency ranges.

Numerical simulations confirm the theoretical prediction of Zitterbewegung in this system.

Abstract

It is shown, for the first time, that the zitterbewegung of photon can appear near the Dirac point in two-dimensional photonic crystal. The superiority of such a phenomenon for photons is that it can be found in different scaling structures with wide frequency regions. It can be observed by measuring the time dependence of the transmission coefficient through photonic crystal slabs. Thus, it is particularly suited for experimentally observing this effect. We have observed such a phenomenon by exact numerical simulations, confirming a long-standing theoretical prediction.