English

Bias driven coherent carrier dynamics in a two-dimensional aperiodic potential

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks 2008-11-19 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

We study the dynamics of an electron wave-packet in a two-dimensional square lattice with an aperiodic site potential in the presence of an external uniform electric field. The aperiodicity is described by ϵm=Vcos(παmxνx)cos(παmyνy)\epsilon_{\bf m} = V\cos{(\pi\alpha m_x^{\nu_x})}\cos{(\pi\alpha m_y^{\nu_y})} at lattice sites (mx,my)(m_x, m_y), with πα\pi \alpha being a rational number, and νx\nu_x and νy\nu_y tunable parameters, controlling the aperiodicity. Using an exact diagonalization procedure and a finite-size scaling analysis, we show that in the weakly aperiodic regime (νx,νy<1\nu_x,\nu_y < 1), a phase of extended states emerges in the center of the band at zero field giving support to a macroscopic conductivity in the thermodynamic limit. Turning on the field gives rise to Bloch oscillations of the electron wave-packet. The spectral density of these oscillations may display a double peak structure signaling the spatial anisotropy of the potential landscape. The frequency of the oscillations can be understood using a semi-classical approach.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0809.3362,
  title  = {Bias driven coherent carrier dynamics in a two-dimensional aperiodic potential},
  author = {F. A. B. F. de Moura and L. P. Viana and M. L. Lyra and V. A. Malyshev and F. Dominguez-Adame},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.3362},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

16 pages, to appear in Phys. Lett. A

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:22:08.381Z