No Arabic abstract
We present a microscopic explanation of the controversially discussed transient negative differential transmission observed in degenerate optical pump-probe measurements in graphene. Our approach is based on the density matrix formalism allowing a time- and momentum-resolved study of carrier-light, carrier-carrier, and carrier-phonon interaction on microscopic footing. We show that phonon-assisted optical intraband transitions give rise to transient absorption in the optically excited hot carrier system counteracting pure absorption bleaching of interband transitions. While interband transition bleaching is relevant in the first hundreds of fs after the excitation, intraband absorption sets in at later times. In particular, in the low excitation regime, these intraband absorption processes prevail over the absorption bleaching resulting in a zero-crossing of the differential transmission. Our findings are in good agreement with recent experimental pump-probe studies.
We address the tunneling current in a graphene-hBN-graphene heterostructure as function of the twisting between the crystals. The twisting induces a modulation of the hopping amplitude between the graphene layers, that provides the extra momentum necessary to satisfy momentum and energy conservation and to activate coherent tunneling between the graphene electrodes. Conservation rules limit the tunneling to states with wavevectors lying at the conic curves defined by the intersection of two Dirac cones shifted in momentum and energy. There is a critical voltage where the intersection is a straight line, and the joint density of states presents a maximum. This reflects in a peak in the tunneling current and in a negative differential conductivity.
The chemical stability of graphene and other free-standing two-dimensional crystals means that they can be stacked in different combinations to produce a new class of functional materials, designed for specific device applications. Here we report resonant tunnelling of Dirac fermions through a boron nitride barrier, a few atomic layers thick, sandwiched between two graphene electrodes. The resonant peak in the device characteristics occurs when the electronic spectra of the two electrodes are aligned. The resulting negative differential conductance persists up to room temperature and is gate voltage-tuneable due to graphenes unique Dirac-like spectrum. Whereas conventional resonant tunnelling devices comprising a quantum well sandwiched between two tunnel barriers are tens of nanometres thick, the tunnelling carriers in our devices cross only a few atomic layers, offering the prospect of ultra-fast transit times. This feature, combined with the multi-valued form of the device characteristics, has potential for applications in high-frequency and logic devices.
We consider the nonlinear terahertz response of n-doped monolayer graphene at room temperature using a microscopic theory of carrier dynamics. Our tight-binding model treats the carrier-field interaction in the length gauge, includes phonon as well as short-range neutral-impurity scattering, and fully accounts for the intrinsic nonlinear response of graphene near the Dirac point. Treating each interaction microscopically allows us to separate contributions from current clipping, phonon creation, and elastic impurity scattering. Although neutral impurity scattering and phonon scattering are both highly energy-dependent, we find that they impact conduction-band electron dynamics very differently, and that together they can help explain experimental results concerning field-dependent terahertz transmission through graphene.
A transient femtosecond population inversion in graphene was recently reported by Li et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 167401 (2012). Based on a microscopic theory we clarify the underlying microscopic mechanism: Transient gain and population inversion in graphene occurs due to a complex interplay of strong optical pumping and carrier cooling that fills states close to the Dirac point giving rise to a relaxation bottleneck. The subsequent femtosecond decay of the optical gain is mainly driven by Coulomb-induced Auger recombination.
Resonance diffraction in the periodic array of graphene micro-ribbons is theoretically studied following a recent experiment [L. Ju et al, Nature Nanotech. 6, 630 (2011)]. Systematic studies over a wide range of parameters are presented. It is shown that a much richer resonant picture would be observable for higher relaxation times of charge carriers: more resonances appear and transmission can be totally suppressed. The comparison with the absorption cross-section of a single ribbon shows that the resonant features of the periodic array are associated with leaky plasmonic modes. The longest-wavelength resonance provides the highest visibility of the transmission dip and has the strongest spectral shift and broadening with respect to the single-ribbon resonance, due to collective effects.