Direct observation of strongly tilted Dirac points at general positions in the reciprocal space

Type-II Dirac points (DPs), which occur at the intersection of strongly tilted and touching energy bands, exhibit many intriguing physical phenomena fundamentally different from the non-tilted type-I counterparts. Over the past decade, their discovery has spurred extensive research into electronic systems and other Bloch-wave systems, such as photonic and phononic crystals. However, current studies typically focus on type-II DPs along high-symmetry directions in the first Brillouin zone (FBZ) under mirror symmetry conditions, which are highly restrictive and limit further investigations and applications. To overcome the stringent constraint, here we identify and demonstrate the emergence of type-II DPs at general positions inside the FBZ without requiring the mirror symmetry. The type-II DPs, being accidental degeneracies, are experimentally realized on a metacrystal slab with H-shaped metallic patterns. Our findings indicate that even in the absence of mirror symmetry, type-II DPs can emerge at designated locations inside the FBZ by simply rotating the H-shaped patterns and adjusting geometrical and physical parameters. Furthermore, based on the rotated type-II DPs, off-axis conical diffractions have been realized and experimentally observed. Meanwhile, we discovered that during the rotation process, the type-II DPs transform into off-axis type-I DPs, but still strongly tilted, resulting in the emergence of negative refractions. Hence, the generic method we propose for inducing type-II or strongly tilted type-I DPs without the high-symmetry limitations opens potential avenues for related research. For example, the observed off-axis conical diffraction and negative refraction could inspire future development and applications in photonics and other Bloch-wave systems.