Anisotropic optics and gravitational lensing of tilted Weyl fermions

Viktor Könye, Lotte Mertens, Corentin Morice, Dmitry Chernyavsky, Ali G. Moghaddam, Jasper van Wezel, Jeroen van den Brink

Published 2022-10-28Version 1

We show that tilted Weyl semimetals with a spatially varying tilt of the Weyl cones provide a platform for studying analogues to problems in anisotropic optics as well as curved spacetime. Considering particular tilting profiles, we numerically evaluate the time evolution of electronic wave packets and their current densities. We demonstrate that electron trajectories in such systems can be obtained from Fermat's principle in the presence of an inhomogeneous, anisotropic effective refractive index. On the other hand, we show how the electrons dynamics reveal gravitational features and use them to simulate gravitational lensing around a synthetic black hole. These results bridge optical and gravitational analogies in Weyl semimetals, suggesting novel pathways for experimental solid-state electron optics.