Voltage-tunable lateral shifts of ballistic electrons in semiconductor quantum slabs

TL;DR

This paper explores how the lateral shifts of ballistic electrons in semiconductor quantum slabs can be controlled and tuned by voltage, revealing negative and positive shifts similar to optical phenomena, with potential device applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates voltage-tunable lateral shifts of ballistic electrons in semiconductor slabs, establishing conditions for negative shifts and their dependence on structure, angle, energy, and electric field.

Findings

Lateral shifts can be negative or positive.

Shifts depend on structure parameters, incidence angle, and energy.

External electric field can tune the shifts from negative to positive.

Abstract

It is investigated that the lateral shifts of the ballistic electrons transmitted through a semiconductor quantum slabs can be negative as well as positive, which are analogous to the anomalous lateral shifts of the transmitted light beam through a dielectric slab. The necessary condition for the shift to be negative is advanced. It is shown that the lateral shifts depend not only on the structure parameters of semiconductor quantum slab, but also on the incidence angle and the incident energy. Numerical calculations further indicate that the lateral shifts can be tuned from negative to positive by the external applied electric field. The voltage-tunable lateral shifts may lead to potential applications in quantum electronic devices.