Simulation of Zitterbewegung by modelling the Dirac equation in Metamaterials

Abstract

We develop a dynamic description of an effective Dirac theory in metamaterials, in which the wavefunction is modeled by the corresponding electric and magnetic field in the metamaterial. This electro-magnetic field can be probed in the experimental setup, which means that the wavefunction of the effective theory is directly accessible by measurement. Our model is based on a plane wave expansion, which ravels the identification of Dirac spinors with single-frequency excitations of the electro-magnetic field in the metamaterial. The characteristic Zitterbewegung is shown to emerge in simulations of the effective theory and we verify this signature with an analytic solution.

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• Dirac fermions in a spinning conical Gödel-type spacetime
• Implications of Kleinian relativity
• Operational Dynamical Modeling of spin 1/2 relativistic particles: the Dirac equation and its classical limit
• Study Zitterbewegung effect in a Quasi One-dimensional Relativistic Quantum Plasma by DHW formalization
• Photonic cellular automaton simulation of relativistic quantum fields: observation of Zitterbewegung
• Dirac fermions with electric dipole moment and position-dependent mass in the presence of a magnetic field generated by magnetic monopoles
• Charged Dirac fermions with anomalous magnetic moment in the presence of the chiral magnetic effect and of a noncommutative phase space