Photonic Aharonov-Bohm effect in photon-phonon interactions.
The Aharonov-Bohm effect is one of the most intriguing phenomena in both classical and quantum physics, and associates with a number of important and fundamental issues in quantum mechanics. The Aharonov-Bohm effects of charged particles have been experimentally demonstrated and found applications in various fields. Recently, attention has also focused on the Aharonov-Bohm effect for neutral particles, such as photons. Here we propose to utilize the photon-phonon interactions to demonstrate that photonic Aharonov-Bohm effects do exist for photons. By introducing nonreciprocal phases for photons, we observe experimentally a gauge potential for photons in the visible range based on the photon-phonon interactions in acousto-optic crystals, and demonstrate the photonic Aharonov-Bohm effect. The results presented here point to new possibilities to control and manipulate photons by designing an effective gauge potential.
1] School of Physics, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia [2] School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin 300387, China [3] Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
Enbang
E
Li
Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
Benjamin J
BJ
Eggleton
1] Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA [2] Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Laboratory of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
Kejie
K
Fang
Department of Electrical Engineering, Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Shanhui
S
Fan