Tunable multiple layered Dirac cones in optical lattices

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to create and control multiple layered Dirac cones in optical lattices using multicomponent cold fermionic gases, enabling simulation of complex quantum phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a method to realize tunable layered Dirac cones with multiple Dirac fermions in optical lattices, including control over Fermi velocities and Dirac point splitting.

Findings

Multiple layered Dirac cones can be engineered in optical lattices.

Fermi velocities of Dirac fermions are tunable.

On-site microwave Raman transitions can manipulate Dirac points.

Abstract

We show that multiple layered Dirac cones can emerge in the band structure of properly addressed multicomponent cold fermionic gases in optical lattices. The layered Dirac cones contain multiple copies of massless spin-1/2 Dirac fermions at the {\it same}location in momentum space, whose different Fermi velocity can be tuned at will. On-site microwave Raman transitions can further be used to mix the different Dirac species, resulting in either splitting of or preserving the Dirac point (depending on the symmetry of the on-site term). The tunability of the multiple layered Dirac cones allows to simulate a number of fundamental phenomena in modern physics, such as neutrino oscillations and exotic particle dispersions with $E\sim p^N $ for arbitrary integer $N$.