Owing to its topological properties and band collapse, Floquet helical photonic lattices have gained increasing attention as a purely classical setting to realize the optical analogues of a wide variety of quantum phenomena. We demonstrate both theoretically and numerically that light propagation in an appropriately designed helical superlattice can exhibit spatial photonic Zitterbewegung effect, i.e., a quiver spatial oscillatory motion of the beam center of mass around its mean trajectory, in both one- and two-dimensional cases. The lattice spacing determines the effective coupling strength between adjacent helical waveguides, and further drastically not only affects the oscillation amplitude and frequency, but also invert their direction of drift when the effective coupling strength is tuned from positive to negative. Complete arrest and inversion of the drift direction of Zitterbewegung effect are reported.

中文翻译：

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螺旋波导阵列中的光学 Zitterbewegung 效应


由于其拓扑特性和能带塌陷，Floquet 螺旋光子晶格作为一种纯粹的经典设置来实现各种量子现象的光学模拟，越来越受到关注。我们从理论和数值上证明了光在适当设计的螺旋超晶格中的传播可以表现出空间光子 Zitterbewegung 效应，即在一维和二维情况下，光束质心围绕其平均轨迹的颤动空间振荡运动。晶格间距决定了相邻螺旋波导之间的有效耦合强度，并且进一步极大地影响了振荡幅度和频率，而且当有效耦合强度从正调整为负时，它们会反转漂移方向。据报道，Zitterbewegung 效应的漂移方向完全停止和反转。