Abstract
Artificial honeycomb lattices offer a tunable platform for studying massless Dirac quasiparticles and their topological and correlated phases. Here we review recent progress in the design and fabrication of such synthetic structures focusing on nanopatterning of two-dimensional electron gases in semiconductors, molecule-by-molecule assembly by scanning probe methods and optical trapping of ultracold atoms in crystals of light. We also discuss photonic crystals with Dirac cone dispersion and topologically protected edge states. We emphasize how the interplay between single-particle band-structure engineering and cooperative effects leads to spectacular manifestations in tunnelling and optical spectroscopies.
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Acknowledgements
We thank R. Fazio, M.I. Katsnelson, A. Pinczuk and G. Vignale for very useful discussions. We acknowledge financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy (MINECO) through grant no. FIS2011-23713 (F.G.), the European Research Council Advanced Grants 'NOV-GRAPHENE' (F.G.) and 'QUAGATUA' (M.L.), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MINCIN) through the grant 'TOQATA' (M.L.), the EU Integrated Project 'AQUTE' (M.L.), the US National Science Foundation through grant DMR-1206916 (H.C.M.), the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, under contract DE-AC02-76SF00515 (H.C.M.), and the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (MIUR) through the programmes 'FIRB - Futuro in Ricerca 2010', grant no. RBFR10M5BT (M.P. and V.P.), and 'FIRB - Futuro in Ricerca 2012', grant no. RBFR12NLNA (V.P.).
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Polini, M., Guinea, F., Lewenstein, M. et al. Artificial honeycomb lattices for electrons, atoms and photons. Nature Nanotech 8, 625–633 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.161
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.161
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