# Measuring Dirac Cones in a Sub-Wavelength Metamaterial

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to engineer and measure Dirac cones in a sub-wavelength metamaterial, creating a photonic analogue of graphene to explore 2D condensed matter physics phenomena.

## Contribution

It introduces a general scheme to reproduce tight-binding Hamiltonian systems in metamaterials and experimentally verifies the creation of Dirac cones in the microwave domain.

## Key findings

- Successful reproduction of graphene's band structure in metamaterials
- Experimental extraction of Dirac cones in the microwave domain
- Metamaterials as convenient platforms for condensed matter physics studies

## Abstract

The exciting discovery of bi-dimensional systems in condensed matter physics has triggered the search of their photonic analogues. In this letter, we describe a general scheme to reproduce some of the systems ruled by a tight-binding Hamiltonian in a locally resonant metamaterial: by specifically controlling the structure and the composition it is possible to engineer the band structure at will. We numerically and experimentally demonstrate this assertion in the microwave domain by reproducing the band structure of graphene, the most famous example of those 2D-systems, and by accurately extracting the Dirac cones. This is a direct evidence that opting for a crystalline description of those sub-wavelength scaled systems, as opposed to the usual description in terms of effective parameters, makes them a really convenient tabletop platform to investigate the tantalizing challenges that solid-state physics offer.