Klein tunneling and supercollimation of pseudospin-1 electromagnetic waves

Abstract

Massless Dirac fermions with a pseudospin of $\frac{1}{2}$ are tied to many intriguing properties of graphene. Previous studies have discussed the possibility of constructing a higher pseudospin system in artificial lattices of ultracold atoms, which can also support equally interesting physical properties. The authors of this paper demonstrate that photon transport in certain photonic crystals corresponds to a pseudospin-1 system. This is a significant development because, contrary to ultracold systems, photonic crystals offer a better opportunity to study novel pseudospin-1 physics in experimentally realizable materials and at room temperature.