Experimental realization of chiral Landau levels in two-dimensional Dirac cone systems with inhomogeneous effective mass
Affiliation of Author(s):香港科技大学
Journal:Light: Science & Applications
Place of Publication:中国
Abstract:Chiral zeroth Landau levels are topologically protected bulk states. In particle physics and condensed matter physics, the chiral zeroth Landau level plays a significant role in breaking chiral symmetry and gives rise to the chiral anomaly. Previous experimental works on such chiral Landau levels are mainly based on three-dimensional Weyl degeneracies coupled with axial magnetic fields. Their realizations using two-dimensional Dirac point systems, being more promising for future applications, were never experimentally realized before. Here we propose an experimental scheme for realizing chiral Landau levels in a two-dimensional photonic system. By introducing an inhomogeneous effective mass through breaking local parity-inversion symmetries, a synthetic in-plane magnetic field is generated and coupled with the Dirac quasi-particles. Consequently, the zeroth-order chiral Landau levels can be induced, and the one-way propagation characteristics are experimentally observed. In addition, the robust transport of the chiral zeroth mode against defects in the system is also experimentally tested. Our system provides a new pathway for the realization of chiral Landau levels in two-dimensional Dirac cone systems, and may potentially be applied in device designs utilizing the chiral response and transport robustness.
First Author:贾宏伟
Indexed by:Basic Research
Discipline:Science
Document Type:J
Volume:12
Page Number:165
Translation or Not:no
Date of Publication:2023-09-01
Included Journals:SCI