Open AccessDirac Electrons in a Planar Potential Well in a Magnetic Field
Author(s) -
Oleksandr Gamayun,
É. V. Gorbar,
V. P. Gusynin
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
ukrainian journal of physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.213
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 2071-0194
pISSN - 2071-0186
DOI - 10.15407/ujpe56.7.688
Subject(s) - quasiparticle , physics , graphene , gapless playback , condensed matter physics , magnetic field , instability , electron , dirac (video compression format) , landau quantization , dirac equation , quantum electrodynamics , quantum mechanics , superconductivity , neutrino
We study the Dirac equation in two spatial dimensions for quasiparticles in a potential well in graphene in a homogeneous magnetic field. It is shown that, at some critical value of the potential strength, the lowest empty energy level crosses a filled negative energy level leading to the instability of the system. The critical potential strength decreases with decrease of a quasiparticle gap and becomes zero in the gapless case. It is argued that the magnetically driven instability of a charged center can be considered as a quantum mechanical counterpart of the magnetic catalysis phenomenon in graphene.