Photonic Zitterbewegung effect: Asymmetric spatio-temporal filtering near the Dirac point

We present a classical explanation of the photonic Zitterbewegung (ZB) effect near the Dirac point in this paper. Due to the asymmetric transmitted spectrums near the Dirac point, a material with the Dirac point actually can function as a spatio-temporal filter. When an optical pulse with its spectrum centered near the Dirac point passing through the “filter”, its spatio-temporal spectrum will be modified dramatically. As a result, the temporal shape of the transmitted pulse is distorted with tailed oscillations, i.e., the photonic ZB effect. The influence of the temporal and spatial widths of the input pulse on the tailed oscillations of the transmitted pulse has also been discussed. Our results may pave the way to the experimental research of the photonic ZB effect and provide a viewpoint for investigating other abnormal transmission properties near the Dirac point.