At low energy, electrons in doped graphene sheets behave like massless Dirac fermions with a Fermi velocity which does not depend on carrier density. Here we show that modulating a two-dimensional electron gas with a long-wavelength periodic potential with honeycomb symmetry can lead to the creation of isolated massless Dirac points with tunable Fermi velocity. We provide detailed theoretical estimates to realize such artificial graphene-like system and discuss an experimental realization in a modulation-doped GaAs quantum well. Ultra high-mobility electrons with linearly-dispersing bands might open new venues for the studies of Dirac-fermion physics in semiconductors.
@article{arxiv.0904.4191,
title = {Engineering artificial graphene in a two-dimensional electron gas},
author = {M. Gibertini and A. Singha and V. Pellegrini and M. Polini and G. Vignale and A. Pinczuk and L. N. Pfeiffer and K. W. West},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.4191},
year = {2009}
}