Extinction of coherent backscattering by a disordered photonic crystal with a Dirac spectrum

Abstract

Photonic crystals with a two-dimensional triangular lattice have a conical singularity in the spectrum. Close to this so-called Dirac point, Maxwell's equations reduce to the Dirac equation for an ultrarelativistic spin-1/2 particle. Here we show that the half-integer spin and the associated Berry phase remain observable in the presence of disorder in the crystal. While constructive interference of a scalar (spin-zero) wave produces a coherent backscattering peak, consisting of a doubling of the disorder-averaged reflected photon flux, the destructive interference caused by the Berry phase suppresses the reflected intensity at an angle which is related to the angle of incidence by time-reversal symmetry. We demonstrate this extinction of coherent backscattering by a numerical solution of Maxwell's equations and compare with analytical predictions from the Dirac equation.

4 pages, 3 figures; slightly expanded new version

References in corpus (10)

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• Valley Vortex States in Sonic Crystals
• Topologically Robust Transport of Photons in a Synthetic Gauge Field
• Photonic analog of graphene model and its extension -- Dirac cone, symmetry, and edge states --
• Ballistic charge transport in graphene and light propagation in periodic dielectric structures with metamaterials: a comparative study
• Anderson localization in metamaterials and other complex media
• Control of coherent backscattering by breaking optical reciprocity
• Conical intersections for light and matter waves
• Broad-band coherent backscattering spectroscopy of the interplay between order and disorder in 3D opal photonic crystals