Observation of Zitterbewegung in photonic microcavities  

作　　者：Seth Lovett Paul M.Walker Alexey Osipov Alexey Yulin Pooja Uday Naik Charles E.Whittaker Ivan A.Shelykh Maurice S.Skolnick Dmitry N.Krizhanovskii 

机构地区：[1]Department of Physics and Astronomy,University of Sheffield,S37RH Sheffield,UK [2]Department of Physics and Technology,ITMO University,St.Petersburg 197101,Russia [3]Science Institute,University of Iceland,Dunhagi 3,IS-107 Reykjavik,Iceland

出　　处：《Light(Science & Applications)》2023年第6期1084-1090,共7页光（科学与应用)（英文版）

基　　金：This work was supported by UKRI grants EP/V026496/1 and EP/N031776/1.D.N.K.acknowledges support from STFC grant ST/W006294/1;The work of A.O.,A.Y.and I.A.S.was supported by Priority2030 Federal Academic Leadership Programme.I.A.S.acknowledges support from Icelandic Research Fund(Rannis),project No.163082-051.

摘　　要：We present and experimentally study the effects of the photonic spin–orbit coupling on the real space propagation of polariton wavepackets in planar semiconductor microcavities and polaritonic analogues of graphene.In particular,we demonstrate the appearance of an analogue Zitterbewegung effect,a term which translates as‘trembling motion’in English,which was originally proposed for relativistic Dirac electrons and consisted of the oscillations of the centre of mass of a wavepacket in the direction perpendicular to its propagation.For a planar microcavity,we observe regular Zitterbewegung oscillations whose amplitude and period depend on the wavevector of the polaritons.We then extend these results to a honeycomb lattice of coupled microcavity resonators.Compared to the planar cavity,such lattices are inherently more tuneable and versatile,allowing simulation of the Hamiltonians of a wide range of important physical systems.We observe an oscillation pattern related to the presence of the spin-split Dirac cones in the dispersion.In both cases,the experimentally observed oscillations are in good agreement with theoretical modelling and independently measured bandstructure parameters,providing strong evidence for the observation of Zitterbewegung.

关 键 词：PLANAR VERSATILE ANALOGUES 

分 类 号：O17[理学—数学]