Unique nature of the lowest Landau level in finite graphene samples with zigzag edges: Dirac electrons with mixed bulk-edge character

TL;DR

This paper investigates the unique mixed bulk-edge character of the lowest Landau level in finite graphene samples with zigzag edges, revealing novel relativistic electron states that differ from nonrelativistic systems.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the lowest Landau level in finite graphene with zigzag edges, highlighting the mixed bulk-edge nature of Dirac electrons and their implications for quantum Hall phenomena.

Findings

Higher Landau levels are purely bulk-type away from edges.

Near edges, higher Landau levels exhibit edge-type states similar to quantum Hall effect.

The lowest Landau level contains mixed bulk-edge relativistic states, unlike nonrelativistic electrons.

Abstract

Dirac electrons in finite graphene samples with zigzag edges under high magnetic fields (in the regime of Landau-level formation) are investigated with regard to their bulk-type and edge-type character. We employ tight-binding calculations on finite graphene flakes (with various shapes) to determine the sublattice components of the electron density in conjunction with analytic expressions (via the parabolic cylinder functions) of the relativistic-electron spinors that solve the continuous Dirac-Weyl equation for a semi-infinite graphene plane. Away from the sample edge, the higher Landau levels are found to comprise exclusively electrons of bulk-type character (for both sublattices); near the sample edge, these electrons are described by edge-type states similar to those familiar from the theory of the integer quantum Hall effect for nonrelativistic electrons. In contrast, the lowest (zero) Landau level contains relativistic Dirac electrons of a mixed bulk-edge character without an analog in the nonrelativistic case. It is shown that such mixed bulk-edge states maintain also in the case of a square flake with combined zigzag and armchair edges. Implications for the many-body correlated-electron behavior (relating to the fractional quantum Hall effect) in finite graphene samples are discussed.