  The Jackiw-Rebbi model describes a one-dimensional Dirac particle coupled to
a soliton field and can be equivalently thought of as the model describing a
Dirac particle under a Lorentz scalar potential. Neglecting the dynamics of the
soliton field, a kink in the background soliton profile yields a topologically
protected zero-energy mode for the particle, which in turn leads to charge
fractionalization. We show here that the model can be realized in a driven
slow-light setup, where photons mimic the Dirac particles and the soliton field
can be implemented-and tuned-by adjusting optical parameters such as the
atom-photon detuning. Furthermore, we discuss how the existence of the
zero-mode, and its topological stability, can be probed naturally by analyzing
the transmission spectrum. We conclude by doing an analysis of the robustness
of our approach against possible experimental errors in engineering the
Jackiw-Rebbi Hamiltonian in this optical set up.
