We generalize Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) semi-classical equations for pseudospin-1 $α-\mathcal{T}_3$ materials with arbitrary hopping parameter $0 < α< 1$, which includes the dice lattice and graphene as two limiting cases. In conjunction with a series-expansion method in powers of Planck constant $\hbar$, we acquired and solved a system of recurrent differential equations for semi-classical electron wave functions in $α-\mathcal{T}_3$. Making use of these obtained wave functions, we analyzed the physics-related mechanism and quantified the transmission of pseudospin-1 Dirac electrons across non-rectangular potential barriers in $α-\mathcal{T}_3$ materials with both zero and finite band gaps. Our studies reveal several unique features, including the way in which the electron transmission depends on the energy gap, the slope of the potential barrier profile and the transverse momentum of incoming electrons. Specifically, we have found a strong dependence of the obtained transmission amplitude on the geometry-phase $ϕ= \tan^{-1} α$ of $α-\mathcal{T}_3$ lattices. We believe our current findings can be applied to Dirac cone-based tunneling transistors in ultrafast analog RF devices, as well as to tunneling-current control by a potential barrier through a one-dimensional array of scatters.
We derive an expression for the conditional time for the reflection of a wave from an arbitrary potential barrier using the WKB wavefunction in the barrier region. Our result indicates that the conditional times for transmission and reflection are equal for a symmetric barrier within the validity of the WKB approach.
At finite temperature we study the quantum tunneling of magnetization for a small ferromagnetic particle with the biaxial symmetry placed in a magnetic field at an arbitrary angle. We present numerical WKB exponent below the crossover temperature in which the quantum tunneling is affected by the thermal activation, and the approximate form of the WKB exponent around the crossover region. The effect of quantum fluctuations on the thermal activation rate beyond the crossover regime are discussed.
We have utilized the finite-difference approach to explore electron-tunneling properties in gapped graphene through various electrostatic-potential barriers changing from Gaussian to a triangular envelope function in comparison with a square potential barrier. Transmission coefficient is calculated numerically for each case and applied to corresponding tunneling conductance. It is well known that Klein tunneling in graphene will be greatly reduced in a gapped graphene. Our results further demonstrate that such a decrease of transmission can be significantly enhanced for spatially-modulated pot…
Recent experimental measurements for near-field radiative heat transfer between two bodies have been able to approach the gap distance within $2 \; \textrm{nm}$, where the contributions of Coulomb fluctuation and electron's tunneling are comparable. Using the nonequilibrium Green's function method in the $G_{0}W_{0}$ approximation, based on a tight-binding model, we obtain for the energy current a Caroli formula from the Meir-Wingreen formula in the local equilibrium approximation. Also, the Caroli formula is consistent with the evanescent part of the heat transfer from the theory of fluctuati…
We report the experimental observation of Fabry-Pérot (FP) interference in the conductance of a gate-defined cavity in a dual-gated bilayer graphene (BLG) device. The high quality of the BLG flake, combined with the device's electrical robustness provided by the encapsulation between two hexagonal boron nitride layers, allows us to observe ballistic phase-coherent transport through a $1$μm-long cavity. We confirm the origin of the observed interference pattern by comparing to tight-binding calculations accounting for the gate-tunable bandgap. The good agreement between experiment and theory, f…
We provide a semiclassical theory of tunneling decay in a magnetic field and a three-dimensional potential of a general form. Because of broken time-reversal symmetry, the standard WKB technique has to be modified. The decay rate is found from the analysis of the set of the particle Hamiltonian trajectories in complex phase space and time. In a magnetic field, the tunneling particle comes out from the barrier with a finite velocity and behind the boundary of the classically allowed region. The exit location is obtained by matching the decaying and outgoing WKB waves at a caustic in complex con…
We consider partially gapped one dimensional (1D) conductors connected to normal leads, as realized in fractional helical wires. At certain electron densities, some distinct charge mode develops a gap due to electron interactions, leading to a fractional conductance. For this state we study the current noise caused by tunneling events inside the wire. We find that the noise's Fano-factor is different from the tunneling charge. This fact arises from charge scattering at the wire-leads interfaces. The resulting noise is, however, universal - it depends only on the identification of the gapped mo…
We show that in gapped bilayer graphene, quasiparticle tunneling and the corresponding Berry phase can be controlled such that it exhibits features of single layer graphene such as Klein tunneling. The Berry phase is detected by a high-quality Fabry-Pérot interferometer based on bilayer graphene. By raising the Fermi energy of the charge carriers, we find that the Berry phase can be continuously tuned from $2π$ down to $0.68π$ in gapped bilayer graphene, in contrast to the constant Berry phase of $2π$ in pristine bilayer graphene. Particularly, we observe a Berry phase of $π$, the standard val…
We study the transport properties of charge carriers in phosphorene with a mass term through double barriers. The solutions of the energy spectrum are obtained and the dependence of the eigenvalues on the barrier potentials and wave vectors in the $x$-direction is numerically computed. Using the boundary conditions together with the matrix transfer method, we determine transmission and the conductance of our system. These two quantities are analyzed by studying their main characteristics as a function of the physical parameters along the armchair direction. Our results show the highly anisotro…
We extend the orbital-dependent electron tunneling model implemented within the three-dimensional (3D) Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) atom-superposition approach for simulating scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) by including arbitrary tip orientations. The orientation of the tip is characterized by a local coordinate system centered on the tip apex atom obtained by a rotation with respect to the sample coordinate system. The rotation is described by the Euler angles. Applying our method, we highlight the role of the real-space shape of the electron orbitals involved in the tunneling, and ana…
A general framework to calculate the Zener current in an indirect semiconductor with an externally applied potential is provided. Assuming a parabolic valence and conduction band dispersion, the semiconductor is in equilibrium in the presence of the external field as long as the electronphonon interaction is absent. The linear response to the electron-phonon interaction results in a non-equilibrium system. The Zener tunneling current is calculated from the number of electrons making the transition from valence to conduction band per unit time. A convenient expression based on the single partic…
The conductance through single-layer graphene (SLG) and AA/AB-stacked bilayer graphene (BLG) junctions is obtained by taking into account band gap and bias voltage terms. First, we consider gapped SLG, while in between, they are connected into pristine BLG. For Fermi energy larger than the interlayer hopping, the conductance as a function of the bilayer region length $d$ reveals two different models of anti-resonances with the same period. As a function of the band gap, with AA-BLG stacking, the results show that the conductance has the same minima whatever the value of $d$, and for AB-BLG, $d…
We investigate the tunneling effect of a Corbino disk in graphene in the presence of a variable magnetic flux $Φ_{i}$ created by a solenoid piercing the inner disk under the effect of a finite mass term in the disk region $ (R_1< r<R_2) $ and an electrostatic potential. Considering different regions, we explicitly determine the associated eigenspinors in terms of Hankel functions. The use of matching conditions and asymptotic behavior of Hankel functions for large arguments, enables us to calculate transmission and other transport quantities. Our results show that the energy gap suppresses the…
Quantum tunneling of domain walls out of an impurity potential in a mesoscopic ferromagnetic sample is investigated. Using improved expressions for the domain wall mass and for the pinning potential, we find that the cross-over temperature between thermal activation and quantum tunneling is of a different functional form than found previously. In materials like Ni or YIG, the crossover temperatures are around 5 mK. We also find that the WKB exponent is typically two orders of magnitude larger than current estimates. The sources for these discrepancies are discussed, and precise estimates for t…
We formulate and solve the perhaps simplest two-body bound state problem for interacting Dirac fermions in two spatial dimensions. A two-body bound state is predicted for gapped graphene monolayers in the presence of weakly repulsive electron-electron interactions and a Coulomb impurity with charge $Ze>0$, where the most interesting case corresponds to $Z=1$. We introduce a variational Chandrasekhar-Dirac spinor wave function and show the existence of at least one bound state. This state leaves clear signatures accessible by scanning tunneling microscopy. One may thereby obtain direct informat…
We study electron tunneling from a tip or a lead into an interacting quantum wire described by Luttinger liquid theory. Within a WKB-type approach, the Coulomb interaction between the wire and the tunneling electrons, as well as the finite traversal time are taken into account. Although the static image potential is only logarithmically suppressed against the bare Coulomb interaction, the dynamic image potential is not strong enough to alter power-law exponents entering the tunneling density of states.
Despite quantum tunneling has been studied since the advent of quantum mechanics, the literature appears to contain no simple (textbook) formula for tunneling in generic asymmetric double-well potentials. In the regime of strong localization, we derive an succinct analytical formula based on the WKB semi-classical approach. Two different examples of asymmetric potentials are discussed: when the two localized levels are degenerate or not. For the first case, we also discuss a time-dependent problem showing quantum Zeno effect.
We investigate tunneling decay in a magnetic field. Because of broken time-reversal symmetry, the standard WKB technique does not apply. The decay rate and the outcoming wave packet are found from the analysis of the set of the particle Hamiltonian trajectories and its singularities in complex space. The results are applied to tunneling from a strongly correlated 2D electron system in a magnetic field parallel to the layer. We show in a simple model that electron correlations exponentially strongly affect the tunneling rate.
We study the effect of a shift of the chemical potential level on the tunneling conductance spectra. In the systems with gapped energy spectra, significant chemical-potential dependent distortions of the differential tunneling conductance curves, $dI/dV$, arise in the gap region. An expression is derived for the correction of the $dI/dV$, which in a number of cases was found to be large. The sign of the correction depends on the chemical potential level position with respect to the gap. The correction of the $dI/dV$ associated with the chemical potential shift has a nearly linear dependence on…
We study the dynamics of semiclassical electrons in (gapped) graphene in two complementary limits, i.e. in the Klein tunneling and valley Hall effect regimes, by scattering wave packets off armchair step potentials and by exposing wave packets to a uniform electric field, respectively. Our numerical wave packet simulation goes beyond semiclassical analytical approximations and standard Klein tunneling treatments and allows to study intra- and intervalley scattering processes. We find distinct Klein tunneling characteristics for low and tall steps, which include unusual Berry curvature induced …
Coupling a quantum particle to a fermionic bath suppresses the particle's amplitude to tunnel, even at zero temperature. While this effect can generally be neglected for gapped baths -- a key feature for superconducting qubits -- , it is possible for the bath to be gapped near the potential minima between which the particle tunnels, but different minima to correspond to different bath topologies. This enforces the bath to undergo gap closing along the tunneling path. In this work, we investigate quantum tunneling in the presence of such a topology-changing fermionic bath. We develop a field th…
Periodic arrays of antidots, i.e. nanoscale perforations, in graphene enable tight confinement of carriers and efficient transport barriers. Such barriers evade the Klein tunneling mechanism by being of the mass rather than electrostatic type. While all graphene antidot lattices (GALs) may support directional barriers, we show, however, that a full transport gap exists only for certain orientations of the GAL. Moreover, we assess the applicability of gapped graphene and the Dirac continuum approach as simplified models of various antidot structures showing that, in particular, the former is an…
We study Dirac fermions in gapped graphene that are subjected to a magnetic field and a potential barrier harmonically oscillating in time. The tunneling modes inside the gap and the associated Goos-Hänchen (GH) shifts are analytically investigated. We show that the GH shifts in transmission for the central band and the first two sidebands change sign at the Dirac points $ε+l\hbar\tildeω$ $(l=0,\pm 1)$. We also find that the GH shifts can be either negative or positive and becomes zero at transmission resonances.
Energy levels of screened charged impurity in gapped graphene under magnetic field
Department of Physics and Computer Science, Medgar Evers College of City University of New York（纽约市立大学梅加·伊弗斯学院物理与计算机科学系）；Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics（博戈留博夫理论物理研究所）
We study the Goos-Hänchen (GH) shifts for transmitted Dirac fermions in gapped graphene through a single barrier structure having a time periodic oscillating component. Our analysis shows that the GH shifts in transmission for central band $l=0$ and two first sidebands $l=\pm1$ change sign at the Dirac points $E=V+l\hbarω$. In particular the GH shifts inbtransmission exhibit enhanced peaks at each bound state associated with the single barrier when the incident angle is less than the critical angle associated with total reflection. Klein tunneling, reflected by perfect transmission at normal i…
The Fowler-Nordheim tunneling current formula has been widely used in the design of devices based on metal/insulator (metal/semiconductor) heterojunctions with triangle potential barriers, such as the flash memory. Here we adopt the model that was used to derive the Landauer formula at finite temperature, the nearly-free electron approximation to describe the electronic states in semi-infinite metal electrode and the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation to describe the transmission coefficient, and derive a tunneling current formula for metal/insulator heterojunctions under large bias…
In the case of the strongly deformed graphene, gapless graphene may turn to gapped graphene at the critical deformation. We find that, like semi-massless fermions, electrons in the deformed graphene, at the critical point, mimic the dispersions of the massless fermions in one direction and the massive fermions in the other. Our predicted dispersion formula is the generalization of the previously predicted formula. The behavior of the particle-like semi-massless fermions tunneling through a gate barrier is contrasted with that of the (pure) massless fermions tunneling through a gate barrier in …
Quantum mechanical tunneling across smooth double barrier potentials modeled using Gaussian functions, is analyzed numerically and by using the WKB approximation. The transmission probability, resonances as a function of incident particle energy, and their dependence on the barrier parameters are obtained for various cases. We also discuss the tunneling time, for which we obtain generalizations of the known results for rectangular barriers.
We investigate transport properties through a rectangular potential barrier in AB-stacked bilayer graphene (AB-BLG) gapped by dielectric layers. Using the Dirac-like Hamiltonian with a transfer matrix approach we obtain transmission and reflection probabilities as well as the associated conductance. For two-band model and at normal incidence, we find extra resonances appearing in transmission compared to biased AB-BLG, which are Fabry-Pérot resonance type. Now by taking into account the inter-layer bias, we show that both of transmission and anti-Klein tunneling are diminished. Regarding four …
Due to Klein tunneling in graphene only quasi-bound states are realized in graphene quantum dots by electrostatic gating. Particles in the quasi-bound states are trapped inside the dot for a finite time and they keep bouncing back and forth till they find their way out. Here we study the effect of an induced gap on the scattering problem of Dirac electrons on a circular electrostatically confined quantum dot. Introducing an energy gap inside the quantum dot enables us to distinguish three scattering regimes instead of two in the case of gapless graphene quantum dot. We will focus on these regi…
The tunneling probability for a system modelling macroscopic quantum tunneling is computed. We consider an open quantum system with one degree of freedom consisting of a particle trapped in a cubic potential interacting with an environment characterized by a dissipative and a diffusion parameter. A representation based on the energy eigenfunctions of the isolated system, i. e. the system uncoupled to the environment, is used to write the dynamical master equation for the reduced Wigner function of the open quantum system. This equation becomes very simple in that representation. The use of the…
