Nanowerk December 23, 2022
Researchers at the University of Illinois constructed a Dirac material consisting of a chain of magnetic-mechanical resonators and demonstrated that when any of these “atoms” was mechanically excited the excitation spread to the rest of the crystal, just like electrons injected into a semiconductor. After demonstrating that a completely uniform Dirac metamaterial does not allow mechanical excitations to pass through, they introduced a specific set of nonlinearities into the system. This new property added sensitivity to the level of the mechanical excitation and could subtly change the resonance energy of the magneto-mechanical atoms. With the right choice of nonlinearity, a sharp transition from insulating to conducting behavior was observed. The effective mass of the mechanical excitation underwent a change of sign depending on the level of the excitation. They demonstrated that in a material defect state can be formed on demand through an invisible property. According to the researchers this has profound implications for quantum information systems…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Engineering Dirac boundary mode in linear and nonlinear diatomic arrays… Credit: Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 135501, 23 September 2022