Refractionless propagation of discretized light

Abstract

Light refraction, i.e. the bending of the path of a light wave at the interface between two different dielectric media, is ubiquitous in optics. Refraction arises from the different speed of light and is unavoidable in continuous media according to Snell's Law. Here we show rather counterintuitively that omnidirectional refractionless propagation can be observed for discretized light crossing a tilted interface separating two homogeneous waveguide lattices.