Discrete Vortices in Photonic Graphene

Abstract

Graphene is a relatively new 2D material consisting of carbon atoms in honeycomb structure. Because of this structure, it has various interesting properties such as linear dispersion relation in the low energy spectrum that governs relativistic nature of electrons in graphene. Since there is an analogy between an electron wavepacket dynamics in time and paraxial wave propagation in z-direction, a honeycomb lattice of evanescently coupled optical waveguides, so called "photonic graphene", can be used to study dynamics of optical wavepackets and to mimic quantum relativistic behaviour in table-top experiments. Another interesting property of graphene is the pseudospin that is associated with generation of vortices. The goal of the present thesis is to investigate the unusual behaviour of the wavepacket in photonic graphene by observing the role of pseudospin for discrete optical vortices in the photonic lattice.