Thresholdless excitation of edge plasmons by transverse current

Abstract

We theoretically demonstrate that dc electron flow across the junction of two-dimensional electron systems leads to excitation of edge magnetoplasmons. The threshold current for such plasmon excitation does not depend on contact effects and approaches zero for ballistic electron systems, which makes a strong distinction from the well-known Dyakonov-Shur and Cerenkov-type instabilities. We estimate the competing plasmon energy gain from dc current and loss due to electron scattering. We show that plasmon self excitation is feasible in GaAs-based heterostructures at $T\lesssim 200$ K and magnetic fields $B\lesssim 10$ T.

6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Boundary instability of a two-dimensional plasma
• Observation of inter-edge magnetoplasmon mode in a degenerate two-dimensional electron gas
• Novel 2D Plasmon Induced by Metal Proximity
• Perturbation theory for two-dimensional hydrodynamic plasmons
• Nonretarded edge plasmon-polaritons in anisotropic two-dimensional materials
• Azbel'-Kaner-Like Cyclotron Resonance in a Two-Dimensional Electron System