Abstract
We study a theoretical model of virtual scanning tunneling microscopy (VSTM) [A. Sciambi, M. Pelliccione, M. Lilly, S. Bank, A. Gossard, L. Pfeiffer, K. West, and D. Goldhaber-Gordon, arXiv:1008.0668 (unpublished); A. Sciambi, M. Pelliccione, S. R. Bank, A. C. Gossard, and D. Goldhaber-Gordon, Appl. Phys. Lett. 97, 132103 (2010)]: a proposed application of interlayer tunneling in a bilayer system to locally probe a two-dimensional electron system (2DES) in a semiconductor heterostructure. We consider tunneling for the case where transport in the 2DESs is ballistic and show that the zero-bias anomaly is suppressed by extremely efficient screening. Since such an anomaly would complicate the interpretation of data from VSTM, this result is encouraging for efforts to implement such a microscopy technique.
- Received 17 May 2009
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.82.235317
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