Mass and chirality inversion of a Dirac cone pair in St\"{u}ckelberg interferometry

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how a St"{u}ckelberg interferometer with two massive Dirac cones can probe band eigenstate properties like chirality and mass sign through interference phase shifts, aiding topological band structure analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract eigenstate information from interference fringes in a Dirac cone-based St"{u}ckelberg interferometer, highlighting a new geometrical phase.

Findings

Inter-band transition probability is influenced by eigenstate differences.

Interference fringes are shifted by a geometrical phase.

The method can serve as a bulk probe for topological bands.

Abstract

We show that a St\"{u}ckelberg interferometer made of two massive Dirac cones can reveal information on band eigenstates such as the chirality and mass sign of the cones. For a given spectrum with two gapped cones, we propose several low-energy Hamiltonians differing by their eigenstates properties. The corresponding inter-band transition probability is affected by such differences in its interference fringes being shifted by a new phase of geometrical origin. This phase can be a useful bulk probe for topological band structures realized with artificial crystals.