Optical Snake States in Photonic Graphene

We propose an optical analogue of electron snake states based on artificial gauge magnetic field in photonic graphene with effective strain implemented by varying distance between pillars. We develop an intuitive and exhaustive continuous model based on tight-binding approximation and compare it with numerical simulations of a realistic photonic structure. The allowed lateral propagation direction is shown to be strongly coupled to the valley degree of freedom and the proposed photonic structure may be used a valley filter.