Questions concerning the generalized Hartman effect

With reference to a particle tunneling through two successive barriers, it seems to have been generally accepted that the tunneling time does not depend on the separation distance between the barriers. This phenomenon has been called the generalized Hartman effect. In this Letter, we point out a lack of mathematical rigor in the reasoning by which this effect was deduced about ten years ago. A mathematically rigorous treatment shows us that the tunneling time does indeed depend on the length of the free space between the barriers.     

Dwell time in one-dimensional graphene asymmetrical barrier

The authors have investigated theoretically the dwell time of Dirac fermions tunneling through electrostatic square barrier in monolayer graphene, including asymmetrical and symmetrical potential barriers. It is found that the incident angle determines the critical incident energy. When the incident energy is larger than the critical incident energy, the dwell time saturate with the increase of the barrier thickness. But when the incident energy is smaller than the critical incident energy, the dwell time oscillates with the increase of the barrier thickness. The behaviors of oscillation and saturation of the dwell time are related with the transmission probability. These results may be helpful for the basic physics and potential application of graphene based electronic devices.     

Asymmetrical edges induced strong current-polarization in embedded graphene nanoribbons

We investigate the electronic structures and transport properties of the embedded zigzag graphene nanoribbon (E-ZGNR) in hexagonal boron nitride trenches, which are achievable in recent experiments. Our first principles results show that the E-ZGNR has a significant enhanced conductivity relative to common ZGNRs due to the existence of asymmetrical edge structures. Moreover, only one spin-orientation electrons possess a widely opened band gap at the magnetic ground state with anti-ferromagnetic configuration, resulting in a full current-polarization at low bias region. Our findings indicate that the state-of-the-art embedding technology is quite useful for tuning the electronic structure of ZGNR and building possible spin injection and spin filter devices in spintronics.     

Tunneling time in space fractional quantum mechanics

We calculate the time taken by a wave packet to travel through a classically forbidden region of space in space fractional quantum mechanics. We obtain the close form expression of tunneling time from a rectangular barrier by stationary phase method. We show that tunneling time depends upon the width b of the barrier for $b\to \infty$ and therefore Hartman effect doesn't exist in space fractional quantum mechanics. Interestingly we found that the tunneling time monotonically reduces with increasing b. The tunneling time is smaller in space fractional quantum mechanics as compared to the case of standard quantum mechanics. We recover the Hartman effect of standard quantum mechanics as a special case of space fractional quantum mechanics.     

Reply to “Comment on: ‘Questions concerning the generalized Hartman effect’ [Phys. Lett. A 375 (2011) 3259]”

Some questions on the generalized Hartman effect presented by Kudaka and Matsumoto [S. Kudaka, S. Matsumoto, Phys. Lett. A 375 (2011) 3259] and a comment on them given by Milanovi? and Radovanovi? are discussed.     

Enhanced spin polarization in an asymmetric magnetic graphene superlattice

The authors investigate the spin-resolved transport through an asymmetrical magnetic graphene superlattice (MGS) consisting of the periodic barriers with abnormal one in height. To quantitatively depict the asymmetrical MGS, an asymmetry factor has been introduced to measure the height change of the abnormal barrier. It is shown that the spin filter effect is strongly enhanced by the barrier asymmetry both in the Klein and the classical tunneling regimes. In the presence of abnormal barrier, the conductance with certain spin direction is suppressed with respect to different tunneling regimes, and thus high spin polarization with opposite sign can be achieved.     

Electrically controllable spin transport in bilayer graphene with Rashba spin-orbit interaction

We study the spin transport in bilayer graphene nanoribbons (BGNs) in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interaction (SOI) and external gate voltages. It is found that the spin polarization can be significantly enhanced by the interlayer asymmetry or longitudinal mirror asymmetry produced by external gate voltages. Rashba SOI alone in BGNs can only generate current with spin polarization along the in-plane y direction, but the polarization components can be found along the x, y and z directions when a gate voltage is applied. High spin polarization with flexible orientation is obtained in the proposed device. Our findings shed new light on the generation of highly spin-polarized current in BGNs without external magnetic fields, which could have useful applications in spintronics device design.     

Valley Hall effect and Nernst effect in strain engineered graphene

We theoretically predict the existence of tunneling valley Hall effect and Nernst effect in the normal/strain/normal graphene junctions, where a strained graphene is sandwiched by two normal graphene electrodes. By applying an electric bias a pure transverse valley Hall current with longitudinal charge current is generated. If the system is driven by a temperature bias, a valley Nernst effect is observed, where a pure transverse valley current without charge current propagates. Furthermore, the transverse valley current can be modulated by the Fermi energy and crystallographic orientation. When the magnetic field is further considered, we obtain a fully valley-polarized current. It is expected these features may be helpful in the design of the controllable valleytronic devices.     

Magnetocapacitance study of the fractional-quantum-Hall effect: Quasiparticle charge and spin polarization

By the method of capacitance spectroscopy and of magnetotransport we have investigated the and fractional-quantum-Hall-effect (FQHE) states in gated GaAs AlGaAs heterojunctions with tuned electron areal density. Our experimental results confirm the theoretical prediction of the fractional quasiparticle charge in the FQHE state and of the existence of spin-aligned quasiholes and spin-reversed quasielectrons in the fully spin-polarized FQHE state.     

On the tunneling time of arbitrary continuous potentials and the Hartman effect

This paper obtains a generalized tunneling time of one-dimensional potentials via time reversal invariance.It also proposes a simple explanation for the Hartman effect using the useful concept of the scattered subwaves.     

Spin gapless armchair graphene nanoribbons under magnetic field and uniaxial strain

Using Green＇s function method, we investigate the spin transport properties of armchair graphene nanoribbons （AG- NRs） under magnetic field and uniaxial strain. Our results show that it is very difficult to transform narrow AGNRs directly from semiconductor to spin gapless semiconductors （SGS） by applying magnetic fields. However, as a uniaxial strain is exerted on the nanoribbons, the AGNRs can transform to SGS by a small magnetic field. The combination mode be- tween magnetic field and uniaxial strain displays a nonmonotonic arch-pattern relationship. In addition, we find that the combination mode is associated with the widths of nanoribbons, which exhibits group behaviors.     

Gauge potential formulations of the spin Hall effect in graphene

Two different gauge potential methods are engaged to calculate explicitly the spin Hall conductivity in graphene. The graphene Hamiltonian with spin-orbit interaction is expressed in terms of kinematic momenta by introducing a gauge potential. A formulation of the spin Hall conductivity is established by requiring that the time evolution of this kinematic momentum vector vanishes. We then calculated the conductivity employing the Berry gauge fields. We show that both of the gauge fields can be deduced from the pure gauge field arising from the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformations.     

Experimental study of the effect of propellant asymmetrical distribution on anode current in a Hall effect thruster

This paper experimentally evaluated the effect of the disruption of the symmetrical distribution of the propellant on the characteristics of the anode current. The change in the asymmetry degree of the propellant distribution is achieved by supplying gas with a dual-cavity gas distributor. The results show that as the asymmetry degree increases, the magnitude of the anode current changes monotonically from a slow growth to a rapid growth, while the peak-to-peak value of the anode current exhibits a non-monotonic behavior. A preliminary analysis shows that the asymmetrical distribution of the propellant causes a nonuniform plasma generation along the azimuthal direction and consequently the appearance of an azimuthal electric field. The effect of the azimuthal electric field on the electron azimuthal drift as well as the induction of the electron axial drift are key factors that account for the change of the anode current and its oscillation.     

Magnetocaloric effect in under applied pressure

In this paper we theoretically discuss the magnetocaloric effect in Tb₅Si₂Ge₂ under applied pressure. We use a model of interacting spins where the effective exchange interaction parameter was self-consistently calculated in terms of the electronic structure of the compound. Our theoretically calculated isothermal entropy changes show the good trend of the available experimental data.     

Enhanced Seebeck effect in graphene devices by strain and doping engineering

In this work, we investigate the possibility of enhancing the thermoelectric power (Seebeck coefficient) in graphene devices by strain and doping engineering. While a local strain can result in the misalignment of Dirac cones of different graphene sections in the k-space, doping engineering leads to their displacement in energy. By combining these two effects, we demonstrate that a conduction gap as large as a few hundred meV can be achieved and hence the enhanced Seebeck coefficient can reach a value higher than 1.4 mV/K in graphene doped heterojunctions with a locally strained area. Such hetero-channels appear to be very promising for enlarging the applications of graphene devices as in strain and thermal sensors.     

Effect of optical pumping on the momentum relaxation time of graphene in the terahertz range

The momentum relaxation time of a photoexcited graphene in the THz frequency range has been studied by using terabertz time domain spectroscopy under optical pumping at room temperature. It is found that the momentum relaxation time of the graphene as a function of the optical pumping intensity exhibits a threshold behavior. The features of the momentum relaxation time as a function of the optical pumping intensity are also investigated. The results are useful for understanding the basic underlying physics of graphene scattering as well as finding the possible applications in carbon- based electronics.     

Inertial spin Hall effect in non-commutative space

In the present Letter the study of inertial spin current (that appears in an accelerated frame of reference) is extended to Non-Commutative (NC) space. In the Hamiltonian framework, the Dirac Hamiltonian in an accelerating frame is computed in the low energy regime by exploiting the Foldy–Wouthuysen scheme. The NC θ-effect appears from the replacement of normal products and commutators by Moyal ?-products and ?-commutators. In particular, the commutator between the external magnetic vector potential and the potential induced by acceleration becomes non-trivial. Expressions for θ-corrected inertial spin current and conductivity are derived explicitly. We have provided yet another way of experimentally measuring θ. The θ bound is obtained from the out of plane spin polarization, which is experimentally observable.     

Goos-Hänchen shift and time delay in dispersive nonlinear media

We present an analysis of the influence of the Goos-Hänchen effect on tunneling times, group delay and dwell time, of electromagnetic waves propagating through an obstacle made of left-handed metamaterial embedded in a dielectric which exhibits saturable type of nonlinearity. The derived equations show that only the group delay, is affected by the Goos-Hänchen shift without any impact on the dwell time. Besides the reduction of the group delay, the most remarkable result is the possibility for total reduction of the Goos-Hänchen shift for finite incident angles. These phenomena are observable in the frequency region for which metamaterial exhibits negative index of refraction.     

Isotope effect of the phonons mean free path in graphene by micro-Raman measurement

The isotope labeled graphene was synthesized in the concentration of ¹³C carbon atom in 1%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 99%. The isotope effect on the phonon behavior in graphene was investigated based on the micro-Raman analysis of ¹³C isotope labeled graphene samples. We found that the phonon scattering is affected by the isotopic carbon atom as a point defect. Based on the experiment results, the Klemens-Callaway model and uncertainty principle were used to obtain the mean free path of the G and D phonons. The results agree with the thermal conductivity measurement by non-contact optical method and with other theoretical calculations.