In order to analytically capture and identify peculiarities in the electronic structure of silicene, Weaire-Thorpe(WT) model, a standard model for treating three-dimensional (3D) silicon, is applied to silicene with the buckled 2D structure. In the o
riginal WT model for four hybridized $sp^3$ orbitals on each atom along with inter-atom hopping, the band structure can be systematically examined in 3D, where flat (dispersionless) bands exist as well. For examining silicene, here we re-formulate the WT model in terms of the overlapping molecular-orbital (MO) method which enables us to describe flat bands away from the electron-holesymmetric point. The overlapping MO formalism indeed enables us to reveal an important difference: while in 3D the dipersive bands with cones are sandwiched by doubly-degenerate flat bands, in 2D the dipersive bands with cones are sandwiched by triply-degenerate and non-degenerate (nearly) flat bands, which is consistent with the original band calculation by Takeda and Shiraishi. Thus emerges a picture for why the whole band structure of silicene comprises a pair of dispersive bands with Dirac cones with each of the band touching a nearly flat (narrow) band at $Gamma$. We can also recognize that, for band engineering, the bonds perpendicular to the atomic plane are crucial, and that a ferromagnetism or structural instabilities are expected if we can shift the chemical potential close to the flat bands.
The effect of a magnetic field on the charged vacuum is investigated. The field dependence of the energy levels causes jumps in the total vacuum charge that occur whenever an energy level crosses the Fermi level and this leads to re-entrant cycles of
vacuum charging and discharging. In atomic systems these effects require astrophysical magnetic fields of around 10^8 T but in graphene with a mass gap they occur in laboratory fields of about 1 T or lower. It is suggested that an electrostatic graphene quantum dot defined by a gate electrode provides a solid state model of the as yet unobserved charged vacuum as well as a model of an atomic system in an extreme astrophysical environment. Phase diagrams are computed to show how the total vacuum charge depends on the confining potential strength and applied magnetic field. In addition the field dependence of the vacuum charge density is investigated and experimental consequences are discussed.
The effect of disorder on the Landau levels of massless Dirac fermions is examined for the cases with and without the fermion doubling. To tune the doubling a tight-binding model having a complex transfer integral is adopted to shift the energies of
two Dirac cones, which is theoretically proposed earlier and realizable in cold atoms in an optical lattice. In the absence of the fermion doubling, the $n=0$ Landau level is shown to exhibit an anomalous sharpness even if the disorder is uncorrelated in space (i.e., large K-K scattering). This anomaly occurs when the disorder respects the chiral symmetry of the Dirac cone.
Preliminary experiments have been performed to investigate the effects of radiative cooling on plasma jets. Thin (3 um - 5 um) conical shells were irradiated with an intense laser, driving jets with velocities > 100 km/s. Through use of different tar
get materials - aluminium, copper and gold - the degree of radiative losses was altered, and their importance for jet collimation investigated. A number of temporally resoved optical diagnostics was used, providing information about the jet evolution. Gold jets were seen to be narrower than those from copper targets, while aluminium targets produced the least collimated flows.
