Cavity-Tunable Dirac Phases and Refraction

Platform: Microwave metasurfaces
My role: Experimental measurements & refraction modeling
Status: Manuscript in preparation; refraction study ongoing

Context: Undergraduate research with Prof. Zhen Gao, Artificial Microstructure Physics Research Group, SUSTech. I am a co-first author of Cavity-Tunable Dirac Phases in a Microwave Metasurface.

Research focus

The electromagnetic environment offers a way to tune a photonic structure’s response. This work examines cavity-controlled photonic modes in a microwave metasurface and explores their potential for reconfigurable wave propagation.

Design schematic of capped-helix resonators and the metasurface at different cavity heights

Design overview of the cavity-embedded metasurface, showing the resonator geometry and different cavity heights.

My contribution

I contributed to sublattice-resolved VNA measurements for the Dirac-phase study. These measurements supported the reconstruction of pseudospin textures and the characterization of winding numbers.

Ongoing work

I am now investigating cavity-controlled refraction by analyzing simulated bands, isofrequency contours, and interface phase matching in MATLAB. This is an exploratory numerical study of candidate operating conditions for reconfigurable beam routing.

Calculated isofrequency contours and predicted ray directions for candidate single-channel and dual-channel refraction at two cavity heights

Preliminary numerical exploration. At a common frequency and incidence angle, band-data analysis identifies candidate single-channel and dual-channel refraction for two cavity heights. The arrows and rays indicate predicted directions; they do not represent simulated beam profiles or measured power. Eigenmode coupling, beam propagation, and channel power remain to be validated.

The Dirac-phase manuscript is in preparation; the refraction work is an ongoing exploratory extension.

Manuscript and author details