Observation of Ground and Excited Flat Band States in Graphene Photonic Ribbons

Abstract

Understanding the wave transport and localisation is a major goal in the study of lattices of different nature. In general, inhibiting the energy transport on a perfectly periodic and disorder-free system is challenging, however, some specific lattice geometries allow localisation due to the presence of dispersionless (flat) bands in the energy spectrum. Here, we report on the experimental realisation of a quasi-one-dimensional photonic graphene ribbon supporting four flat-bands. We study the dynamics of fundamental and dipolar modes, which are analogous to the s and p orbitals, respectively. In the experiment, both modes (orbitals) are effectively decoupled from each other, implying two sets of six bands, where two of them are completely flat. Using an image generator setup, we excite the s and p flat band modes and demonstrate their non-diffracting propagation for the first time. Our results open an exciting route towards photonic emulation of higher orbital dynamics.

6 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Artificial flat band systems: from lattice models to experiments
• Experimental realisation of $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric flat bands
• p-band engineering in artificial electronic lattices
• Realization of all-band-flat photonic lattices
• Experimental observation of inter-orbital coupling
• Photonic Flatband Laser
• Topological and flat bands states induced by hybridized interactions in one-dimensional photonic lattices
• Perfect localization on flat band binary one-dimensional photonic lattices
• Properties of electron lenses produced by ponderomotive potential with Bessel and Laguerre-Gaussian beams
• Nonlinear Switch and Spatial Lattice Solitons of Photonic s-p Orbitals
• Topology and criticality in non-Hermitian multimodal optical resonators through engineered losses
• Controlled transport based on multiorbital Aharonov-Bohm photonic caging