A 50/50 electronic beam splitter in graphene nanoribbons as a building block for electron optics

Abstract

Based on the investigation of the multi-terminal conductance of a system composed of two graphene nanoribbons, in which one is on top of the other and rotated by 60 degrees, we propose a setup for a 50/50 electronic beam splitter that neither requires large magnetic fields nor ultra low temperatures. Our findings are based on an atomistic tight-binding description of the system and on the Green's function method to compute the Landauer conductance. We demonstrate that this system acts as a perfect 50/50 electronic beam splitter, in which its operation can be switched on and off by varying the doping (Fermi energy). We show that this device is robust against thermal fluctuations and long range disorder, as zigzag valley chiral states of the nanoribbons are protected against backscattering. We suggest that the proposed device can be applied as the fundamental element of the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer, as well as a building block of many devices in electron optics.

7 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (20)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Detecting Topological Currents in Graphene Superlattices
• An On-Demand Coherent Single Electron Source
• Coherence and Indistinguishability of Single Electrons Emitted by Independent Sources
• Conductance quantization and transport gap in disordered graphene nanoribbons
• Perfectly Conducting Channel and Universality Crossover in Disordered Nano-Graphene Ribbons
• Electronic transport properties of graphene nanoribbons
• Graphene Nanobubbles as Valley Filters and Beamsplitters
• Finite bias visibility of the electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer
• Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment for temporal investigation of single electron fractionalization
• Decoherence and single electron charging in an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer
• Edge-State Velocity and Coherence in a Quantum Hall Fabry-Perot Interferometer
• Edge Channel Interference Controlled by Landau Level Filling
• Persistence of two-dimensional topological insulator state in wide HgTe quantum well
• Shot-by-shot imaging of Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with an intensified sCMOS camera
• The role of the disorder range and electronic energy in the graphene nanoribbons perfect transmission
• Two-dimensional Fermionic Hong-Ou-Mandel Interference with Weyl Fermions
• Quantum Logic Processor: A Mach Zehnder Interferometer based Approach

Cited by in corpus (5)

• A tunable electronic beam splitter realized with crossed graphene nanoribbons
• Crossed graphene nanoribbons as beam splitters and mirrors for electron quantum optics
• Electron beam splitting effect with crossed zigzag graphene nanoribbons in high-spin metallic states
• Spin-polarizing electron beam splitter from crossed graphene nanoribbons
• Mach--Zehnder-like interferometry with graphene nanoribbon networks