Photonic analogue of Zitterbewegung in binary waveguide arrays

Understand

An optical analogue of Zitterbewegung (ZB), i.e.

• of the trembling motion of Dirac electrons caused by the interference between positive and negative energy states, is proposed for spatial beam propagation in binary waveguide arrays.
• In this optical system ZB is simply observable as a quiver spatial oscillatory motion of the beam center of mass around its mean trajectory.