New formulas for Maslov’s canonical operator in a neighborhood of focal points and caustics in two-dimensional semiclassical asymptotics

We study above-barrier scattering of Dirac electrons by a smooth electrostatic potential combined with a coordinate-dependent mass in graphene. We assume that the potential and mass are sufficiently smooth, so that we can define a small dimensionless semiclassical parameter h 1. This electronic optics setup naturally leads to focusing and the formation of caustics, which are singularities in the density of trajectories. We construct a semiclassical approximation for the wavefunction in all points, placing particular emphasis on the region near the caustic, where the maximum of the intensity lies. Because of the matrix character of the Dirac equation, this wavefunction contains a nontrivial semiclassical phase, which is absent for a scalar wave equation and which influences the focusing. We carefully discuss the three steps in our semiclassical approach: the adiabatic reduction of the matrix equation to an effective scalar equation, the construction of the wavefunction using the Maslov canonical operator and the application of the uniform approximation to the integral expression for the wavefunction in the vicinity of a caustic. We consider several numerical examples and show that our semiclassical results are in very good agreement with the results of tight-binding calculations. In particular, we show that the semiclassical phase can have a pronounced effect on the position of the focus and its intensity.

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New formulas for Maslov’s canonical operator in a neighborhood of focal points and caustics in two-dimensional semiclassical asymptotics

Cited by 25 publications

References 16 publications

Chapter 3: Pseudo-Differential Operators and Fourier Operators

Chapter 3: Pseudo-Differential Operators and Fourier Operators

Maslov’s canonical operator, Hörmander’s formula, and localization of the Berry-Balazs solution in the theory of wave beams

Electronic optics in graphene in the semiclassical approximation

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