Mean-field solution of the parity-conserving kinetic phase transition in one dimension

A two-offspring branching annihilating random walk model, with finite reaction rates, is studied in one-dimension. The model exhibits a transition from an active to an absorbing phase, expected to belong to the $DP2$ universality class embracing systems that possess two symmetric absorbing states, which in one-dimensional systems, is in many cases equivalent to parity conservation. The phase transition is studied analytically through a mean-field like modification of the so-called {\it parity interval method}. The original method of parity intervals allows for an exact analysis of the diffusion-controlled limit of infinite reaction rate, where there is no active phase and hence no phase transition. For finite rates, we obtain a surprisingly good description of the transition which compares favorably with the outcome of Monte Carlo simulations. This provides one of the first analytical attempts to deal with the broadly studied DP2 universality class.Comment: 4 Figures. 9 Pages. revtex4. Some comments have been improve

Experimental observation of Weyl points

In 1929, Hermann Weyl derived the massless solutions from the Dirac equation - the relativistic wave equation for electrons. Neutrinos were thought, for decades, to be Weyl fermions until the discovery of the neutrino mass. Moreover, it has been suggested that low energy excitations in condensed matter can be the solutions to the Weyl Hamiltonian. Recently, photons have also been proposed to emerge as Weyl particles inside photonic crystals. In all cases, two linear dispersion bands in the three-dimensional (3D) momentum space intersect at a single degenerate point - the Weyl point. Remarkably, these Weyl points are monopoles of Berry flux with topological charges defined by the Chern numbers. These topological invariants enable materials containing Weyl points to exhibit a wide variety of novel phenomena including surface Fermi arcs, chiral anomaly, negative magnetoresistance, nonlocal transport, quantum anomalous Hall effect, unconventional superconductivity[15] and others [16, 17]. Nevertheless, Weyl points are yet to be experimentally observed in nature. In this work, we report on precisely such an observation in an inversion-breaking 3D double-gyroid photonic crystal without breaking time-reversal symmetry.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Metamaterial Broadband Angular Selectivity

We demonstrate how broadband angular selectivity can be achieved with stacks of one-dimensionally periodic photonic crystals, each consisting of alternating isotropic layers and effective anisotropic layers, where each effective anisotropic layer is constructed from a multilayered metamaterial. We show that by simply changing the structure of the metamaterials, the selective angle can be tuned to a broad range of angles; and, by increasing the number of stacks, the angular transmission window can be made as narrow as desired. As a proof of principle, we realize the idea experimentally in the microwave regime. The angular selectivity and tunability we report here can have various applications such as in directional control of electromagnetic emitters and detectors.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure