Recent research on non-Abelian phenomena has cast a new perspective on controlling light. In this work, we provide a simple and general approach to induce non-Abelian gauge field to tremble the light beam trajectory. With in-plane duality symmetry relaxed, our theoretical analysis finds that non-Abelian electric field can be synthesized through a simple real-space rotation of any biaxial material. With orthogonal optical modes excited, their interference leads to an oscillation of the propagating optical beam, which is a direct consequence of the emergence of non-Abelian electric field, influencing light in a manner similar with how electric fields act on charged particles. Our microwave experiments provide unambiguous evidence to the observation of such an optical Zitterbewegung effect where excellent agreement can be found between theorical derivation, numerical simulations and experiments. By extending the idea to optical regime using natural material, we here provide another example to shake the general intuition that light travels in straight lines in homogeneous media.

中文翻译：

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在超材料中观察非阿贝尔规范场的一般方法


最近对非阿贝尔现象的研究为控制光提供了新的视角。在这项工作中，我们提供了一种简单而通用的方法来诱导非阿贝尔规范场震动光束轨迹。在面内对偶对称性放宽的情况下，我们的理论分析发现，非阿贝尔电场可以通过任何双轴材料的简单实空间旋转来合成。在正交光学模式被激发的情况下，它们的干涉导致传播光束的振荡，这是非阿贝尔电场出现的直接结果，以类似于电场作用在带电粒子上的方式影响光。我们的微波实验为观测这种光学 Zitterbewegung 效应提供了明确的证据，其中理论推导、数值模拟和实验之间可以找到极好的一致性。通过将这个想法扩展到使用天然材料的光学状态，我们在这里提供了另一个例子来动摇光在均质介质中以直线传播的一般直觉。