Landau levels in strained two-dimensional photonic crystals

Abstract

The principal use of photonic crystals is to engineer the photonic density of states, which controls light-matter coupling. We theoretically show that strained 2D photonic crystals can generate artificial electromagnetic fields and highly degenerate Landau levels. Since photonic crystals are not described by tight-binding, we employ a multiscale expansion of the full wave equation. Using numerical simulations, we observe dispersive Landau levels which we show can be flattened by engineering a pseudoelectric field. Artificial fields yield a design principle for aperiodic nanophotonic systems.

Effective magnetic field induced by inhomogeneous Fermi velocity in strained honeycomb structures

“…For the sake of generality, we present this work in the broader context of strained honeycomb lattices, i.e., beyond strained graphene. Nowadays, synthetic systems with honeycomb lattices are artificially created to mimic the behavior of Dirac quasiparticles, such as molecular graphene [44], ultracold atoms [45], photonic lattices [46,47], polaritonic systems [48,49], and acoustic structures [50,51]. These artificial graphene-like systems offer the advantage of tuning, in a controlled and independent manner, the hopping parameter between different lattice sites.…”

“…These artificial graphene-like systems offer the advantage of tuning, in a controlled and independent manner, the hopping parameter between different lattice sites. As a consequence, they open a door to explore the physical effects as well as applications of gauge fields [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. For instance, for photonic lattices, it has been envisioned that such pseudoelectromagnetic fields will be useful for applications, such as chip-scale nonlinear optics and coupling to quantum emitters, where strong enhancement of light-matter interaction is achieved from the high density-of-states associated with flat bands [47].…”

“…As a consequence, they open a door to explore the physical effects as well as applications of gauge fields [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. For instance, for photonic lattices, it has been envisioned that such pseudoelectromagnetic fields will be useful for applications, such as chip-scale nonlinear optics and coupling to quantum emitters, where strong enhancement of light-matter interaction is achieved from the high density-of-states associated with flat bands [47]. To a large degree, applications of synthetic gauge fields concern phenomena related to the physics of topological quantum matter [52,53].…”