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Vortical Reflection and Spiraling Fermi Arcs with Weyl Metamaterials

Hua Cheng, Wenlong Gao, Yan‐Gang Bi, Wenwei Liu, Zhancheng Li, Qinghua Guo, Yang Yang, Oubo You, Jing Feng, Hong‐Bo Sun, Jianguo Tian, Shuqi Chen, Shuang Zhang

2020Physical Review Letters38 citationsDOI

Abstract

Scatterings and transport in Weyl semimetals have caught growing attention in condensed matter physics, with observables including chiral zero modes and the associated magnetoresistance and chiral magnetic effects. Measurement of electrical conductance is usually performed in these studies, which, however, cannot resolve the momentum of electrons, preventing direct observation of the phase singularities in scattering matrix associated with Weyl point. Here we experimentally demonstrate a helical phase distribution in the angle (momentum) resolved scattering matrix of electromagnetic waves in a photonic Weyl metamaterial. It further leads to spiraling Fermi arcs in an air gap sandwiched between a Weyl metamaterial and a metal plate. Benefiting from the alignment-free feature of angular vortical reflection, our findings establish a new platform in manipulating optical angular momenta with photonic Weyl systems.

Topics & Concepts

MetamaterialFermi Gamma-ray Space TelescopeReflection (computer programming)PhysicsTheoretical physicsCondensed matter physicsOpticsComputer scienceProgramming languageMetamaterials and Metasurfaces ApplicationsTopological Materials and PhenomenaStrong Light-Matter Interactions