Four band tunneling in bilayer graphene

TL;DR

This paper investigates electron tunneling in bilayer graphene considering four energy bands, revealing new transmission resonances and effects of interlayer bias on conductance and symmetry.

Contribution

It extends the analysis of tunneling in bilayer graphene to a four band model, identifying new resonances and effects of interlayer bias.

Findings

New sharp transmission peaks absent in two band models

Interlayer bias opens a bandgap and suppresses conductance

Pseudospin symmetry is extended to four bands

Abstract

The conductance, the transmission and the reflection probabilities through rectangular potential barriers and pn-junctions are obtained for bilayer graphene taking into account the four bands of the energy spectrum. We have evaluated the importance of the skew hopping parameters {\gamma}3 and {\gamma}4 to these properties and show that for energies E>{\gamma}1/100 their effect is negligible. For high energies two modes of propagation exist and we investigate scattering between these modes. For perpendicular incidence both propagation modes are decoupled and scattering between them is forbidden. This extends the concept of pseudospin as defined within the two band approximation to a four band model and corresponds to the (anti)symmetry of the wavefunctions under in-plane mirroring. New transmission resonances are found that appear as sharp peaks in the conductance which are absent in the two band approximation. The application of an interlayer bias to the system: 1) breaks the pseudospin structure, 2) opens a bandgap that results in a distinct feature of suppressed transmission in the conductance, and 3) breaks the angular symmetry with respect to normal incidence in the transmission and reflection.