Simulation of Zitterbewegung by modelling the Dirac equation in Metamaterials
Quantum Physics
2015-11-10 v2
Abstract
We develop a dynamic description of an effective Dirac theory in metamaterials, in which the wavefunction is modeled by the corresponding electric and magnetic field in the metamaterial. This electro-magnetic field can be probed in the experimental setup, which means that the wavefunction of the effective theory is directly accessible by measurement. Our model is based on a plane wave expansion, which ravels the identification of Dirac spinors with single-frequency excitations of the electro-magnetic field in the metamaterial. The characteristic Zitterbewegung is shown to emerge in simulations of the effective theory and we verify this signature with an analytic solution.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1505.05140,
title = {Simulation of Zitterbewegung by modelling the Dirac equation in Metamaterials},
author = {Sven Ahrens and Jun Jiang and Yong Sun and Shi-Yao Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.05140},
year = {2015}
}