Reconfigurable refraction manipulation at synthetic temporal interfaces with scalar and vector gauge potentials.

ABSTRACT: Photonic gauge potentials, including scalar and vector ones, play fundamental roles in emulating photonic topological effects and for enabling intriguing light transport dynamics. While previous studies mainly focus on manipulating light propagation in uniformly distributed gauge potentials, here we create a series of gauge-potential interfaces with different orientations in a nonuniform discrete-time quantum walk and demonstrate various reconfigurable temporal-refraction effects. We show that for a lattice-site interface with the potential step along the lattice direction, the scalar potentials can yield total internal reflection (TIR) or Klein tunneling, while vector potentials manifest direction-invariant refractions. We also reveal the existence of penetration depth for the temporal TI

SUBMITTER: Ye H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10193993 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature