Making Massless Dirac Fermions from Patterned Two-Dimensional Electron Gases

Abstract

Analysis of the electronic structure of an ordinary two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) under an appropriate external periodic potential of hexagonal symmetry reveals that massless Dirac fermions are generated near the corners of the supercell Brillouin zone. The required potential parameters are found to be achievable under or close to laboratory conditions. Moreover, the group velocity is tunable by changing either the effective mass of the 2DEG or the lattice parameter of the external potential, and it is insensitive to the potential amplitude. The finding should provide a new class of systems other than graphene for investigating and exploiting massless Dirac fermions using 2DEGs in semiconductors.

5 pages, 4 figures, significant revision of abstract, text, and figures

References in corpus (7)

• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Anisotropic behaviors of massless Dirac fermions in graphene under periodic potential
• Flat bands and Wigner crystallization in the honeycomb optical lattice
• New Generation of Massless Dirac Fermions in Graphene under External Periodic Potentials
• Electron Beam Supercollimation in Graphene Superlattices
• The $p_{x,y}$-orbital counterpart of graphene: cold atoms in the honeycomb optical lattice
• Dirac-point engineering and topological phase transitions in honeycomb optical lattices

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Engineering artificial graphene in a two-dimensional electron gas
• Electronic properties of graphene antidot lattices
• Landau Levels and Quantum Hall Effect in Graphene Superlattices