From laterally modulated two-dimensional electron gas towards artificial graphene

Cyclotron resonance has been measured in far-infrared transmission of GaAs/AlxGa1−xAs heterostructures with an etched trigonal lateral superlattice intended to mimic graphene with lattice constant of the order of 100 nm (about 1000 times larger than that of natural graphene). Nonlinear dependence of the resonance position on magnetic field was observed, as well as its splitting into several modes. Our explanation, based on a perturbative calculation, describes the observed phenomena as a weak effect of the lateral potential on the two-dimensional electron gas. Using this approach, we found a correlation between parameters of the lateral patterning and the created effective potential and obtained thus insights into how the electronic miniband structure has been tuned. The miniband dispersion was calculated using a simplified model and allowed us to formulate four basic criteria that have to be satisfied to reach graphene-like physics in such systems.

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