Dirac Optics

Mou Yang, Shi-Liang Zhu

We present a scheme to realize three-dimensional Dirac-like fermions with an edge-centered cubic optical lattice. We propose a method to construct the optical edge-centered cubic crystals and then determine the parameters required for the description of the systems with a tight-binding model. Interestingly, we show that the low-energy quasiparticles are three-dimensional massive or massless Dirac-like fermions determined by the parameters of the system. In addition, two three-dimensional degenerate flat bands lie between the upper and the lower branches of the Dirac dispersion. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the Dirac dispersion relation and the flat bands can be verified by the density profile measurement.

Давид Николаевич Клышко

Luca Lepori, Giuseppe Mussardo, Andrea Trombettoni

We propose the experimental realization of (3+1) relativistic Dirac fermions using ultracold atoms in a rotating optical lattice or, alternatively, in a synthetic magnetic field. This approach has the advantage to give mass to the Dirac fermions by coupling the ultracold atoms to a Bragg pulse. A dimensional crossover from (3+1) to (2+1) Dirac fermions can be obtained by varying the anisotropy of the lattice. We also discuss under which conditions the interatomic potentials give rise to relativistically invariant interactions among the Dirac fermions.

Miguel Orszag

Zhihao Lan, Alessio Celi, W. Lu +2 more

We show that multiple layered Dirac cones can emerge in the band structure of properly addressed multicomponent cold fermionic gases in optical lattices. The layered Dirac cones contain multiple copies of massless spin-1/2 Dirac fermions at the same location in momentum space, whose different Fermi velocity can be tuned at will. On-site microwave Raman transitions can further be used to mix the different Dirac species, resulting in either splitting of or preserving the Dirac point (depending on the symmetry of the on-site term). The tunability of the multiple layered Dirac cones allows us to simulate a number of fundamental phenomena in modern physics, such as neutrino oscillations and exotic particle dispersions with E~p(N) for arbitrary integer N.