Time-dependent Landauer-Büttiker approach to charge pumping in ac-driven graphene nanoribbons

Michael Ridley and Riku Tuovinen
Phys. Rev. B 96, 195429 – Published 21 November 2017

Abstract

We apply the recently developed partition-free time-dependent Landauer-Büttiker (TD-LB) formalism to the study of periodically driven transport in graphene nanoribbons (GNRs). When an ac driving is applied, this formalism can be used to prove generic conditions for the existence of a nonzero dc component of the net current (pump current) through the molecular device. Time-reversal symmetry breaking in the driving field is investigated and found to be insufficient for a nonzero pump current. We then derive explicit formulas for the current response to a particular biharmonic bias. We calculate the pump current through different GNR configurations and find that the sign and existence of a nonzero pump current can be tuned by simple alterations to the static parameters of the TD bias. Furthermore, we investigate transient currents in different GNR configurations. We find a selection rule of even and odd harmonic response signals depending on a broken dynamical inversion symmetry in the bias.

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  • Received 9 August 2017
  • Revised 22 October 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.195429

©2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Research Areas
  1. Physical Systems
Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Michael Ridley1 and Riku Tuovinen2

  • 1The Raymond and Beverley Sackler Center for Computational Molecular and Materials Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel
  • 2Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Center for Free Electron Laser Science, 22761 Hamburg, Germany

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Issue

Vol. 96, Iss. 19 — 15 November 2017

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