Abstract
Pseudo-magnetic fields generated in artificially strained lattices have enabled the emulation of exotic phenomena once thought to be exclusive to charged particles. However, they have so far failed to emulate the tunability of real magnetic fields because they are determined solely by the engineered strain configuration, rendering them fixed by design. Here, we unveil a universal mechanism to tune pseudo-magnetic fields for polaritons supported by a strained honeycomb metasurface composed of interacting dipole emitters/antennas. Without altering the strain configuration, we show that the pseudo-magnetic field strength can be tuned by modifying the surrounding electromagnetic environment via an enclosing cavity waveguide, which modifies the nature of the dipole–dipole interactions. Owing to the competition between short-range Coulomb interactions and long-range photon-mediated interactions, the pseudo-magnetic field can be entirely switched off at a critical cavity width, without removing the strain. Consequently, by varying only the cavity width, we demonstrate a tunable Lorentz-like force that can be switched on/off and a collapse and revival of polariton Landau levels. Unlocking this tunable pseudo-magnetism poses new intriguing questions beyond the paradigm of conventional tight-binding physics.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
All relevant data are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.
References
Hafezi, M., Demler, E. A., Lukin, M. D. & Taylor, J. M. Robust optical delay lines with topological protection. Nat. Phys. 7, 907–912 (2011).
Umucalilar, R. O. & Carusotto, I. Artificial gauge field for photons in coupled cavity arrays. Phys. Rev. A 84, 043804 (2011).
Fang, K., Yu, Z. & Fan, S. Photonic Aharonov-Bohm effect based on dynamic modulation. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 153901 (2012).
Fang, K., Yu, Z. & Fan, S. Realizing effective magnetic field for photons by controlling the phase of dynamic modulation. Nat. Photon. 6, 782–787 (2012).
Fang, K. & Fan, S. Controlling the flow of light using the inhomogeneous effective gauge field that emerges from dynamic modulation. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 203901 (2013).
Hafezi, M., Mittal, S., Fan, J., Migdall, A. & Taylor, J. M. Imaging topological edge states in silicon photonics. Nat. Photon. 7, 1001–1005 (2013).
Lin, Q. & Fan, S. Light guiding by effective gauge field for photons. Phys. Rev. X 4, 031031 (2014).
Tzuang, L. D., Fang, K., Nussenzveig, P., Fan, S. & Lipson, M. Non-reciprocal phase shift induced by an effective magnetic flux for light. Nat. Photon. 8, 701–705 (2014).
Liu, F. & Li, J. Gauge field optics with anisotropic media. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 103902 (2015).
Schine, N., Ryou, A., Gromov, A., Sommer, A. & Simon, J. Synthetic Landau levels for photons. Nature 534, 671–675 (2016).
Schomerus, H. & Halpern, N. Y. Parity anomaly and Landau-level lasing in strained photonic honeycomb lattices. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 013903 (2013).
Rechtsman, M. C. et al. Strain-induced pseudo-magnetic field and photonic Landau levels in dielectric structures. Nat. Photon. 7, 153–158 (2013).
Abbaszadeh, H., Souslov, A., Paulose, J., Schomerus, H. & Vitelli, V. Sonic Landau levels and synthetic gauge fields in mechanical metamaterials. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 195502 (2017).
Brendel, C., Peano, V., Painter, O. J. & Marquardt, F. Pseudo-magnetic fields for sound at the nanoscale. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 3390–3395 (2017).
Yang, Z., Gao, F., Yang, Y. & Baile, Z. Strain-induced gauge field and Landau levels in acoustic structures. Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 194301 (2017).
Wen, X. et al. Acoustic Landau quantization and quantum-Hall-like edge states. Nat. Phys. 15, 352–356 (2019).
Jia, H. et al. Observation of chiral zero mode in inhomogeneous three-dimensional Weyl metamaterials. Science 363, 6423 (2019).
Peri, V., Serra-Garcia, M., Ilan, R. & Huber, S. D. Axial-field-induced chiral channels in an acoustic Weyl system. Nat. Phys. 15, 357–361 (2019).
Guinea, F., Katsnelson, M. I. & Geim, A. K. Energy gaps and a zero-field quantum Hall effect in graphene by strain engineering. Nat. Phys. 6, 30–33 (2009).
Levy, N. et al. Strain-induced pseudo-magnetic fields greater than 300 Tesla in graphene nanobubbles. Science 329, 544–547 (2010).
Low, T. & Guinea, F. Strain-induced pseudo-magnetic field for novel graphene electronics. Nano Lett. 10, 3551–3554 (2010).
Chaves, A., Covaci, L., Rakhimov, K. U., Farias, G. A. & Peeters, F. M. Wave-packet dynamics and valley filter in strained graphene. Phys. Rev. B 82, 205430 (2010).
de Juan, F., Cortijo, A., Vozmediano, M. A. H. & Cano, A. Aharonov-Bohm interferences from local deformations in graphene. Nat. Phys. 7, 810–815 (2011).
Mann, C.-R., Sturges, T. J., Weick, G., Barnes, W. L. & Mariani, E. Manipulating type-I and type-II Dirac polaritons in cavity-embedded honeycomb metasurfaces. Nat. Commun. 9, 2194 (2018).
Plotnik, Y. et al. Observation of unconventional edge states in ‘photonic graphene’. Nat. Mater. 13, 57–62 (2014).
Bellec, M., Kuhl, U., Montambaux, G. & Mortessagne, F. Tight-binding couplings in microwave artificial graphene. Phys. Rev. B 88, 115437 (2013).
Jacqmin, T. et al. Direct observation of Dirac cones and a flatband in a honeycomb lattice for polaritons. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 116402 (2014).
Ashcroft, N. W. & Mermin, N. D. Solid State Physics (Brooks Cole, 1976).
Landau, L. Diamagnetismus der metalle. Z. Phys. 64, 629–637 (1930).
Svidzinsky, A. A., Chang, J.-T. & Scully, M. O. Cooperative spontaneous emission of N atoms: many-body eigenstates, the effect of virtual Lamb shift processes and analogy with radiation of N classical oscillators. Phys. Rev. A 81, 053821 (2010).
Yuen-Zhou, J., Saikin, S. S., Yao, N. Y. & Aspuru-Guzik, A. Topologically protected excitons in porphyrin thin films. Nat. Mater. 13, 1026–1032 (2014).
Yuen-Zhou, J. et al. Plexciton Dirac points and topological modes. Nat. Commun. 7, 11783 (2016).
Bettles, R. J., Gardiner, S. A. & Adams, C. S. Enhanced optical cross section via collective coupling of atomic dipoles in a 2D array. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 103602 (2016).
Shahmoon, E., Wild, D. S., Lukin, M. D. & Yelin, S. F. Cooperative resonances in light scattering from two-dimensional atomic arrays. Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 113601 (2017).
Bettles, R. J. et al. Topological properties of a dense atomic lattice gas. Phys. Rev. A 96, 041603 (2017).
Perczel, J. et al. Topological quantum optics in two-dimensional atomic arrays. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 023603 (2017).
González-Tudela, A., Hung, C.-L., Chang, D. E., Cirac, J. I. & Kimble, H. J. Subwavelength vacuum lattices and atom-atom interactions in two-dimensional photonic crystals. Nat. Photon. 9, 320–325 (2015).
Bekenstein, R. et al. Quantum metasurfaces with atom arrays. Nat. Phys. 16, 676–681 (2020).
Nikitin, A. Y., Guinea, F., García-Vidal, F. J. & Martín-Moreno, L. Fields radiated by a nanoemitter in a graphene sheet. Phys. Rev. B 84, 195446 (2011).
Perczel, J., Borregaard, J., Chang, D. E., Yelin, S. F. & Lukin, M. D. Topological quantum optics using atom-like emitter arrays coupled to photonic crystals. Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 083603 (2020).
Acknowledgements
C.-R.M. acknowledges financial support from the Rank Prize Funds and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom through the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Metamaterials (grant number EP/L015331/1). S.A.R.H. acknowledges financial support from a Royal Society TATA University Research Fellowship (grant number RPG-2016-186). E.M. acknowledges financial support from the Royal Society International Exchanges grant number IEC/R2/192166.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
C.-R.M. conceived the idea, developed the theory, performed the calculations and wrote the manuscript. S.A.R.H. contributed to the theoretical understanding. E.M. initiated the study, contributed to the theoretical understanding and supervised the project. All authors commented on the manuscript.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Sections 1–7 and Figs. 1–9.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mann, CR., Horsley, S.A.R. & Mariani, E. Tunable pseudo-magnetic fields for polaritons in strained metasurfaces. Nat. Photonics 14, 669–674 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0688-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0688-8
This article is cited by
-
Strain and pseudo-magnetic fields in optical lattices from density-assisted tunneling
Communications Physics (2022)