Emergence of Bloch oscillations in one-dimensional systems

Electrons in periodic potentials exhibit oscillatory motion in the presence of an electric field. Such oscillations are known as Bloch oscillations. In this article we theoretically investigate the emergence of Bloch oscillations for systems where the electric field is confined to a finite region, l...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. B 2017-06, Vol.95 (23), Article 235433
Main Authors: Popescu, Bogdan Stefan, Croy, Alexander
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Direct current
Electric fields
Electronic devices
Electrons
Emergence
Field strength
Mathematical models
Oscillations
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Electrons in periodic potentials exhibit oscillatory motion in the presence of an electric field. Such oscillations are known as Bloch oscillations. In this article we theoretically investigate the emergence of Bloch oscillations for systems where the electric field is confined to a finite region, like in typical electronic devices. We use a one-dimensional tight-binding model within the single-band approximation to numerically study the dynamics of electrons after a sudden switching-on of the electric field. We find a transition from a regime with direct current to Bloch oscillations when increasing the system size or decreasing the field strength. We propose a pump-probe scheme to observe the oscillations by measuring the accumulated charge as a function of the pulse length.
ISSN:2469-9950
2469-9969
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.95.235433