Simulating dynamically assisted production of Dirac pairs in gapped graphene monolayers

Abstract

In a vicinity of the Fermi surface, graphene layers with bandgaps allow for closely simulating the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics and, thus, its yet unverified strong-field phenomenology with accessible field strengths. This striking feature is exploited to investigate a plausible materialization of dynamically assisted pair production through the analog production of light but massive pairs of Dirac quasiparticles. The process is considered in a field configuration combining a weak high-frequency electric mode and a strong low-frequency electric field oscillating in time. Its theoretical study is carried out from a quantum kinetic approach, similar to the one governing the spontaneous production of pairs in QED. We show that the presence of the weak assisting mode can strongly increase the number of produced massive Dirac pairs as compared with a setup driven by the strong field only. The efficiency of the process is contrasted, moreover, with the case of gapless graphene to highlight the role played by the quasiparticle mass.

arXiv comment9 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (35)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• Two-Dimensional Gas of Massless Dirac Fermions in Graphene
• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Substrate-induced band gap opening in epitaxial graphene
• Substrate-induced bandgap in graphene on hexagonal boron nitride
• Ultrafast Photoluminescence from Graphene
• Dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism
• Multiple colliding electromagnetic pulses: a way to lower the threshold of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pair production from vacuum
• Colloquium: Graphene spectroscopy
• A quantum kinetic equation for particle production in the Schwinger mechanism
• Catalysis of Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production
• Schwinger pair production in space- and time-dependent electric fields: Relating the Wigner formalism to quantum kinetic theory
• Pair creation: back-reactions and damping
• The Schwinger mechanism and graphene
• Barrier control in tunneling e^+ e^- photoproduction
• Momentum Spectra for Dynamically Assisted Schwinger Pair Production
• Dynamical view of pair creation in uniform electric and magnetic fields
• Effective mass signatures in multiphoton pair production
• Creation of particle-hole superposition states in graphene at multiphoton resonant excitation by laser radiation
• Strongly enhanced pair production in combined high- and low-frequency laser fields
• Electron-positron pair production in a bifrequent oscillating electric field
• Pulse shape dependence in the dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect
• Lifting shell structures in the dynamically assisted Schwinger effect in periodic fields
• Optimization of Schwinger pair production in colliding laser pulses
• Creation of quasiparticles in graphene by a time-dependent electric field
• Plasma production and thermalisation in a strong field
• Nonperturbative Bethe-Heitler pair creation in combined high- and low-frequency laser fields
• Optical emission of graphene and electron-hole pair production induced by a strong THz field
• Time-domain quantum interference in graphene
• Doubly assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect
• Assisted dynamical Schwinger effect: pair production in a pulsed bifrequent field
• Low-dimensional approach to pair production in an oscillating electric field: Application to bandgap graphene layers
• Analog Sauter-Schwinger effect in semiconductors for spacetime-dependent fields
• Signature of Schwinger's pair creation rate via radiation generated in graphene by strong electric current
• Euclidean mirrors: enhanced vacuum decay from reflected instantons

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Dimensionality-driven photoproduction of massive Dirac pairs near threshold in gapped graphene monolayers
• Pair production from the vacuum by a weakly inhomogeneous space-dependent electric potential step
• Quantum field theoretical framework for the electromagnetic response of graphene and dispersion relations with implications to the Casimir effect
• Strong-field Breit-Wheeler pair production in ${\mathrm{QED}}_{2+1}$
• Light-amplified Landau-Zener conductivity in gapped graphene monolayers: a simulacrum of photo-catalyzed vacuum instability
• Thomson backscattering in combined two laser and magnetic field
• Multiphoton absorption and Rabi oscillations in armchair graphene nanoribbons
• Prediction of the Expansion of the Universe made by Alexander Friedmann and the Effect of Particle Creation in Cosmology
• States of charged quantum fields and their statistical properties in the presence of critical potential steps
• Dynamically assisted Klein tunneling in the Furry picture
• Charged scalars at finite electric field and temperature in the optimized perturbation theory
• Coulomb impurities in graphene driven by ultrashort electromagnetic pulses: Excitation, ionization, and pair creation
• Coulomb impurities in graphene driven by fast ions
• In- and out-states of scalar particles confined between two capacitor plates