Artificial graphene as a tunable Dirac material

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development of artificial honeycomb lattices as tunable platforms for exploring massless Dirac quasiparticles, topological phases, and their experimental realizations across various physical systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in designing and fabricating synthetic structures exhibiting Dirac physics, including semiconductor nanopatterning, molecular assembly, and ultracold atom trapping.

Findings

Demonstration of Dirac cone dispersion in photonic crystals

Observation of topologically protected edge states

Tunable properties of artificial graphene structures

Abstract

Artificial honeycomb lattices offer a tunable platform to study massless Dirac quasiparticles and their topological and correlated phases. Here we review recent progress in the design and fabrication of such synthetic structures focusing on nanopatterning of two-dimensional electron gases in semiconductors, molecule-by-molecule assembly by scanning probe methods, and optical trapping of ultracold atoms in crystals of light. We also discuss photonic crystals with Dirac cone dispersion and topologically protected edge states. We emphasize how the interplay between single-particle band structure engineering and cooperative effects leads to spectacular manifestations in tunneling and optical spectroscopies.