• 文献标题:   Observation of Valley Landau-Zener-Bloch Oscillations and Pseudospin Imbalance in Photonic Graphene
  • 文献类型:   Article
  • 作  者:   SUN Y, LEYKAM D, NENNI S, SONG DH, CHEN H, CHONG YD, CHEN ZG
  • 作者关键词:  
  • 出版物名称:   PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
  • ISSN:   0031-9007 EI 1079-7114
  • 通讯作者地址:   San Francisco State Univ
  • 被引频次:   5
  • DOI:   10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.033904
  • 出版年:   2018

▎ 摘  要

We demonstrate intervalley Bloch oscillation (BO) and Landau-Zener tunneling (LZT) in an optically induced honeycomb lattice with a refractive-index gradient. Unlike previously observed BO in a gapped square lattice, we show nonadiabatic beam dynamics that are highly sensitive to the direction of the index gradient and the choice of the Dirac cones. In particular, a symmetry-preserving potential leads to nearly perfect LZT and coherent BO between the inequivalent valleys, whereas a symmetry-breaking potential generates asymmetric scattering, imperfect LZT, and valley-sensitive generation of vortices mediated by a pseudospin imbalance. This clearly indicates that, near the Dirac points, the transverse gradient does not always act as a simple scalar force, as commonly assumed, and the LZT probability is strongly affected by the sublattice symmetry as analyzed from an effective Landau-Zener Hamiltonian. Our results illustrate the anisotropic response of an otherwise isotropic Dirac platform to real-space potentials acting as strong driving fields, which may be useful for manipulation of pseudospin and valley degrees of freedom in graphenelike systems.