Dirac reflection for a single-layer graphene quantum well

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spin-orbit coupling affects electron reflection in a single-layer graphene quantum well, revealing that the effective mass-like term influences transport properties and can suppress reflection at small incident angles.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of Dirac fermions in graphene quantum wells considering spin-orbit coupling, highlighting the impact of an effective mass-like term on reflection probabilities.

Findings

Reflection probability depends on the effective mass-like term.

Reflection can be greatly suppressed at small incident angles.

Spin-orbit coupling influences transport properties in graphene quantum wells.

Abstract

We address the problem of Dirac fermions graphene quantum well and we focus on the low energy approximation for the Hamiltonian of the system where the former can be described by a Dirac-like Hamiltonian. Interesting relations are obtained and used to discuss the influence of the spin-orbit coupling, which induces an effective mass-like term, on the transport properties of Single-layer graphene quantum well. It's found that the reflection probability of incident electrons is sensitive to the effective mass-like term. This can be explained by the dependence of R on the incident electrons direction and their energies. Notably, we found that the reflection probability for massive fermions with a very small angle, i.e. the wave-vector along the transport direction is zero in the GQW, can be greatly suppressed.