First experimental realization of the Dirac oscillator

J. A. Franco-Villafañe, E. Sadurní, S. Barkhofen, U. Kuhl, F. Mortessagne, T. H. Seligman

Published 2013-06-10, updated 2013-12-17Version 2

We present the first experimental microwave realization of the one-dimensional Dirac oscillator, a paradigm in exactly solvable relativistic systems. The experiment relies on a relation of the Dirac oscillator to a corresponding tight-binding system. This tight-binding system is implemented as a microwave system by a chain of coupled dielectric disks, where the coupling is evanescent and can be adjusted appropriately. The resonances of the finite microwave system yields the spectrum of the one-dimensional Dirac oscillator with and without mass term. The flexibility of the experimental set-up allows the implementation of other one-dimensional Dirac type equations.