RUI: Edge States and Vortices in Photonic Graphene-Like Structures

普通的光学材料（如眼镜）在其光学特性上是高度均匀的--不规则被认为是质量低劣的标志。 然而，通过精确控制不规则粒子，使它们符合特定的模式，人们可以创造出有趣的和潜在的有用效果，这些效果超出了均匀系统中的正常情况。该项目将探索一些可能模仿石墨烯行为的此类效应-石墨烯近年来因其在未来微电子制造中的潜在应用而引起了极大的兴趣。 这种石墨烯的模拟物比真实的石墨烯更容易使用，从而可以更快地探索这种迷人材料的真正极限。 将在本研究中使用的实验技术是足够简单的本科生和硕士水平的研究生积极参与，但研究活动将使学生接触到广泛的现象，在跨学科科学的前沿领域。事实上，在整个项目中，一个主要的重点将放在指导学生，特别是那些来自不同种族的弗朗西斯科湾区人口。 碳基石墨烯已经被高度吹捧和测试为许多应用的非凡材料，除了阐明基本物理现象。最近，人们对创造“人造”石墨烯系统的兴趣激增，不仅是为了电子，而且是为了原子，光子和其他准粒子，如极化激元。这仅仅是因为人造石墨烯可以提供一个可调系统来探索在天然石墨烯中难以或不可能实现的物理现象。在这个项目中，一个简单的光学感应技术将被用来创建二维蜂窝（石墨烯类）晶格以及其他非传统的晶格结构。更重要的是，这些光子结构将被用作研究一些基本问题的工作台，包括表面态，涡旋和等效自旋效应以及光在石墨烯晶格中的磁效应。虽然在可重构光子结构的简单光学设置中进行，但许多拟议的工作将对其他科学领域产生直接影响，从凝聚态物理学到原子物理学，例如被困在周期性势中的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚。例如，电子边缘态几十年前就已为人所知，但这种基本现象最近引起了人们对光学越来越大的兴趣，这导致了光子拓扑绝缘体的成功演示。事实上，使用光学系统作为光子模拟器来研究复杂的经典和量子现象有很大的潜力。

Ordinary optical materials (like eyeglasses) are manufactured to be highly uniform in their optical properties--irregularities are taken to be a sign of inferior quality. By precisely controlling the irregularites, however, and making them conform to a particular pattern, one can create intriguing and potentially useful effects that go beyond what is normal in uniform systems. This project will explore some such effects which may mimic the behavior of graphene--a material that has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years because of its potential application in future microelectronics manufacturing. This analog of graphene is easier to work with than real graphene, allowing more rapid progress in exploring the true limits of this fascinating material. The experimental techniques that will be used in this research are straightforward enough for active participation of undergraduate and masters-level graduate students, yet the research activities will expose students to a broad range of phenomena in a cutting-edge field of interdisciplinary science. In fact, throughout the project, a major emphasis will be placed on mentoring students, particularly those from the ethnically diverse San Francisco Bay Area population. Carbon-based graphene has been highly touted and tested as an extraordinary material for many applications, apart from elucidating fundamental physics phenomena. Recently, there is a surge of interest in creating "artificial" graphene systems not only for electrons, but also for atoms, photons, and other quasiparticles such as polaritons. This is simply because that artificial graphene can provide a tunable system to explore physical phenomena difficult or impossible to achieve in natural graphene. In this project, a simple optical induction technique will be used to create 2D honey-comb (graphene-like) lattices as well as other nonconventional lattice structures. More importantly, these photonic structures will be employed as a workbench for investigation some fundamental issues including surface states, vortices and equivalent spin effects and magnetic effects of light in graphene-like lattices. Although performed in a simple optical setting of reconfigurable photonic structures, much of the proposed work will have direct impacts on other areas of sciences, ranging from condensed matter physics to atomic physics such as Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in periodic potentials. For instance, the electronic edge states were known for decades, but such fundamental phenomena have recently attracted growing interest in optics that has led to the successful demonstration of photonic topological insulators. Indeed, there is much potential to use optical systems as photonic simulators for studying complex classical and quantum phenomena.