Controllable photo-induced spin and valley filtering in silicene

Abstract

We study ballistic transport of Dirac electrons through a strip in silicene, when the strip is exposed to off-resonant circularly polarized light and an electric field applied perpendicular to the silicene plane. We show that the conductance through the strip is spin- or/and valley-polarized. This can be explained by spin-valley coupling in silicene, and modification of its band structure through virtual absorption/emission processes and also by the perpendicular electric field. The spin- (valley-) polarization can be enhanced by tuning the light intensity and the value of the perpendicular electric field, leading to perfect spin (valley) filtering for certain of their values. Further, the spin (valley) polarization can be inverted by reversing the perpendicular electric field (by reversing the perpendicular electric field or reversing the circular polarization of the light irradiation). The conditions necessary for the fully valley polarization is determined.

6 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Intrinsic and Rashba Spin-orbit Interactions in Graphene Sheets
• Valley-Polarized Metals and Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Silicene
• Quantum-limited shot noise in graphene
• Photo-Induced Topological Phase Transition and a Single Dirac-Cone State in Silicene
• Photoinduced transition between conventional and topological insulators in two-dimensional electronic systems
• Spin- and valley-dependent transport through arrays of ferromagnetic silicene junctions
• Spin-polarized current induced by a local exchange field in a silicene nanoribbon
• Controllable intrinsic DC spin/valley Hall conductivity in ferromagnetic silicene: Exploring a fully spin/valley polarized transport

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Spin Transport and Spin Pump in Graphene-like Materials: Effect of tilt in Dirac cones
• Photoenhanced spin/valley polarization and tunneling magnetoresistance in ferromagnetic-normal-ferromagnetic silicene junction
• Strain control of real-and lattice-spin currents in a silicene junction
• Large magnetoresistance dips and perfect spin-valley filter induced by topological phase transitions in silicene
• Photo-induced spin and valley-dependent Seebeck effect in the low-buckled Dirac materials
• Nearly pure spin-valley sideband tunneling in silicene: effect of interplay of time periodic potential barrier and spin-valley-dependent Dirac mass
• Electronic spectrum and optical properties of Y-shaped Kekule-patterned graphene: Band nesting resonance as an optical signature
• Photogalvanic Effect in Silicene