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Anisotropic optics and gravitational lensing of tilted Weyl fermions

Viktor Könye1, Lotte Mertens1,2, Corentin Morice3, Dmitry Chernyavsky1, Ali G. Moghaddam4,5, Jasper van Wezel2, and Jeroen van den Brink1,6

  • 1Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, IFW Dresden and Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, Helmholtzstrasse 20, D-01069 Dresden, Germany
  • 2Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, NL-1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 3Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS UMR 8502, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France
  • 4Department of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan 45137-66731, Iran
  • 5Computational Physics Laboratory, Physics Unit, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Tampere University, FI-33014 Tampere, Finland
  • 6Institute for Theoretical Physics, TU Dresden, D-01069 Dresden, Germany

Phys. Rev. B 107, L201406 – Published 23 May, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.107.L201406

Abstract

We show that tilted Weyl semimetals with a spatially varying tilt of the Weyl cones provide a platform for studying analogs to problems in anisotropic optics as well as curved spacetime. Considering particular tilting profiles, we numerically evaluate the time evolution of electronic wave packets and their current densities. We demonstrate that electron trajectories in such systems can be obtained from Fermat's principle in the presence of an inhomogeneous, anisotropic effective refractive index. On the other hand, we show how the electron dynamics reveal gravitational features and use them to simulate gravitational lensing around a synthetic black hole. These results bridge optical and gravitational analogies in Weyl semimetals, suggesting different pathways for experimental solid-state electron optics.

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