Catastrophe optics of caustics in single and bilayer graphene: fine structure of caustics

TL;DR

This paper investigates the wave scattering and caustic formation in graphene n-p junctions, demonstrating that semiclassical catastrophe optics accurately predicts caustic structures and scaling laws in single-layer graphene.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical approach to model electron caustics in graphene, aligning well with exact solutions and enabling efficient design of graphene electron-optical devices.

Findings

Semiclassical approximation matches exact wave functions near caustics in single-layer graphene.

Universal scaling laws describe caustic shrinking and intensity divergence.

Method can be extended to complex geometries for device design.

Abstract

We theoretically study the scattering of a plane wave of a ballistic electron on a circular n-p junction in single and bilayer graphene. We compare the exact wave function inside the junction to that obtained from a semiclassical formula developed in catastrophe optics. In the semiclassical picture short-wavelength electrons are treated as rays of particles that can get reflected and refracted at the n-p junction according to Snell's law with negative refraction index. We show that for short wavelength and close to caustics this semiclassical approximation gives good agreement with the exact results in the case of single-layer graphene. We also verify the universal scaling laws that govern the shrinking rate and intensity divergence of caustics in the semiclassical limit. It is straightforward to generalize our semiclassical method to more complex geometries, offering a way to efficiently design and model graphene-based electron-optical systems.