Thursday, April 4, 2013

1304.0950 (Julia Heinl et al.)

Interplay of Aharonov-Bohm and Berry phases in gate-defined graphene
quantum dots
   [PDF]

Julia Heinl, Martin Schneider, Piet W. Brouwer
We study the influence of a magnetic flux tube on the possibility to electrostatically confine electrons in a graphene quantum dot. Without magnetic flux tube, the graphene pseudospin is responsible for a quantization of the total angular momentum to half-integer values. On the other hand, with a flux tube containing half a flux quantum, the Aharonov-Bohm phase and Berry phase precisely cancel, and we find a state at zero angular momentum that cannot be confined electrostatically. In this case, true bound states only exist in regular geometries for which states without zero-angular-momentum component exist, while non-integrable geometries lack confinement. We support these arguments with a calculation of the two-terminal conductance of a gate-defined graphene quantum dot, which shows resonances for a disc-shaped geometry and for a stadium-shaped geometry without flux tube, but no resonances for a stadium-shaped quantum dot with a $\pi$-flux tube.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0950

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