2014/12/31 by Sebabrata Mukherjee, Alexander Spracklen, Debaditya Choudhury +4 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.114.245504
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 245504 (2015) · Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 2015/05/15 · arxiv updated 2015/06/24
We show experimentally how a non-diffracting state can be excited in a photonic Lieb lattice. This lattice supports three energy bands, including a perfectly flat middle band, which corresponds to an infinite effective mass with zero dispersion. We show that a suitable optical input state can be prepared so as to only excite the flat band. We analyse, both experimentally and theoretically, the evolution of such photonic flat-band states, and show their remarkable robustness, even in the presence of disorder.