Abstract

The optical manifestation of solid-state phenomena has become a field of increasing interest in recent years [1]. When transferring the physics of particles onto an optical setting, the observer benefits from spatial instead of temporal evolution of the wave function, which can be directly monitored. However, the wave evolution in optics is commonly paraxial and, hence, described by a Schrödinger-type equation. Therefore, to date the optical investigation of particle physics has been limited to non-relativistic particles. Hence, we demonstrate how relativistic wave evolution can be generated in engineered waveguide arrays and we observe the peculiar Zitterbewegung of an evolving wave packet. When a 1D binary waveguide lattice is excited near the edge of the Brillouin zone, one can formally show that the light intensity obeys the Dirac equation for relativistic particles.

© 2011 IEEE