English

Quantum Hall Effects in Silicene

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2012-05-21 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

We investigate quantum Hall effects in silicene by applying electric field EzE_z parallel to magnetic field. Silicene is a monolayer of silicon atoms forming a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice, and shares almost every remarkable property with graphene. A new feature is its buckled structure, due to which the band structure can be controlled externally by changing EzE_z. The low energy physics of silicene is described by massive Dirac fermions, where the mass is a function of EzE_z and becomes zero at the critical field EcrE_{\text{cr}}. We show that there are no zero energy states due to the Dirac mass term except at the critical electric field EcrE_{\text{cr}}. Furthermore it is shown that the 4-fold degenerate zero-energy states are completely resolved even without considering Coulomb interactions. These features are highly contrasted with those in graphene, demonstrating that silicene has a richer structure. The prominent feature is that, by applying the electric field, we can control the valley degeneracy. As a function of EzE_z, Hall plateaux appear at the filling factors ν=0,±1,±2,±3,...\nu =0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\pm 3,... except for the points where level crossings occur.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.1357,
  title  = {Quantum Hall Effects in Silicene},
  author = {Motohiko Ezawa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.1357},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

7 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T20:15:50.284Z