Inhibition and Reconstruction of Zener Tunneling in Photonic Honeycomb Lattices

Abstract

Quantum coherence is the central element of particle states, and it characterizes the overall performance of various quantum materials. Bloch oscillation is a fundamental coherent behavior of particles under a static potential, which can be easily destroyed by Zener tunneling in multiband 2D lattice materials. The control of Zener tunneling therefore plays the key role in quantum engineering for complicated physical systems. Here, the inhibition and reconstruction of Zener tunneling in photonic honeycomb lattices are experimentally demonstrated. Deformed honeycomb lattices are integrated and an effective static potential is realized on the 2D lattice materials. Zener tunneling disappears in stretch‐type lattices and wave packets stay in the dispersionless upper energy band. On the contrary, Zener tunneling is greatly enhanced in compression‐type lattices and wave packets exhibit directional oscillations without branches, which manifest the preserved coherence of the wave packets. The results demonstrate the protection of photonic coherence by structurally controlling the Zener tunneling, representing a step toward flexible quantum engineering for large‐scale artificial quantum materials.

Probing Structural Correlated Disorder with Photonic Transport

“…Especially, the artificial photonic lattice materials have rapidly become a versatile platform to investigate wave transport, including Bloch oscillation, superdiffusion, Anderson localization, and diffusion. − Besides, it is feasible to demonstrate some abnormal wave behaviors, such as disorder-enhanced wave transport in quasiperiodic materials and coexistence of dynamical delocalization and spectral localization in coupled optical fiber loops . The precise controllability of the integrated waveguide system enables it possible to explore the open questions, including the relation of correlated disorder and wave behaviors.…”

Photonic Floquet Landau-Zener tunneling and temporal beam splitters

“…The breakdown of adiabaticity would lead to many observable phenomena, among which the most prominent signature is the Landau-Zener tunneling (LZT) effect (2,3), which manifests as a transition between two instantaneous energy levels at an avoided crossing point under strong external driving. LZT has a broad impact in different areas of physics and has been observed in several systems, including Bose-Einstein condensate (4,5), semiconductor superlattices (6,7), superconducting qubits (8)(9)(10), and optical waveguide arrays (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). LZT is also at the heart of the Schwinger pair production in quantum electrodynamics, i.e., the creation of matter from vacuum by an extremely strong electric field (18), and closely related to the Kibble-Zurek theory of the topological defect production in nonequilibrium phase transitions (19).…”