Three dimensional photonic Dirac points in metamaterials

Abstract

Topological semimetals, representing a new topological phase that lacks a full bandgap in bulk states and exhibiting nontrivial topological orders, recently have been extended to photonic systems, predominantly in photonic crystals and to a lesser extent, metamaterials. Photonic crystal realizations of Dirac degeneracies are protected by various space symmetries, where Bloch modes span the spin and orbital subspaces. Here, we theoretically show that Dirac points can also be realized in effective media through the intrinsic degrees of freedom in electromagnetism under electromagnetic duality. A pair of spin polarized Fermi arc like surface states is observed at the interface between air and the Dirac metamaterials. These surface states show linear k-space dispersion relation, resulting in nearly diffraction-less propagation. Furthermore, eigen reflection fields show the decomposition from a Dirac point to two Weyl points. We also find the topological correlation between a Dirac point and vortex/vector beams in classic photonics. The theoretical proposal of photonic Dirac point lays foundation for unveiling the connection between intrinsic physics and global topology in electromagnetism.

arXiv comment15 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (22)

• Topological Insulators
• Topological insulators and superconductors
• Weyl and Dirac Semimetals in Three Dimensional Solids
• Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators
• Determination of Effective Permittivity and Permeability of Metamaterials from Reflection and Transmission Coefficients
• Classification of topological quantum matter with symmetries
• Possible Realization of Directional Optical Waveguides in Photonic Crystals with Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry
• Photonic Analogue of Two-dimensional Topological Insulators and Helical One-Way Edge Transport in Bi-Anisotropic Metamaterials
• Experimental observation of Weyl points
• Quantum spin Hall effect of light
• Weyl points and line nodes in gapless gyroid photonic crystals
• Experimental realization of photonic topological insulator in a uniaxial metacrystal waveguide
• Well-localized edge states in two-dimensional topological insulators: ultrathin Bi films
• Three-dimensional topological photonic crystal with a single surface Dirac cone
• Three-Dimensional All-Dielectric Photonic Topological Insulator
• Topological Photonic Phase in Chiral Hyperbolic Metamaterials
• Experimental observation of optical Weyl points
• Electromagnetic duality symmetry and helicity conservation for the macroscopic Maxwell's equations (previously "Experimental demonstration of electromagnetic duality symmetry breaking")
• Plasmon Weyl Degeneracies in Magnetized Plasma
• Hyperbolic Weyl point in reciprocal chiral metamaterial
• Three-dimensional photonic Dirac points stabilized by point group symmetry
• Type-II Dirac Photons

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Topological Photonics
• Realization of a three-dimensional photonic topological insulator
• Topological Quadrupolar Semimetals
• A brief review of topological photonics in one, two, and three dimensions
• Observation of non-Abelian nodal links in photonics
• Observation of Three-dimensional Photonic Dirac points and Spin-polarized Surface Arcs
• Photonic ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ topological Anderson insulators
• $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric non-Hermitian Dirac semimetals
• Discovering topological surface states of Dirac points
• Type-II Dirac photons at the metasurfaces
• Observation of Dirac hierarchy in three-dimensional acoustic topological insulators
• Topologically non-trivial photonic surface degeneracy in a photonic metamaterial
• Deterministic scheme for two-dimensional type-II Dirac points and experimental realization in acoustics
• Giant photonic spin Hall effect near the Dirac points
• Possible Realization of Optical Quadratic and Dirac Points in Woodpile Photonic Crystals
• Realization of a transition between type-I and type-II Dirac semimetals in monolayers
• $Z_2$ Dirac points with topologically protected multihelicoid surface states
• Parallel and anti-parallel helical surface states for topological semimetals
• Dirac Metamaterial Assembled by Pyrene Derivative and its Topological Photonics
• Optical Black-hole Analog Created by Topological Phase Transition with a Long-lived Horizon
• Weyl excitations via helicon-phonon mixing in conducting materials