Controlling the orbital Hall effect in gapped bilayer graphene in the terahertz regime

Abstract

We study the orbital Hall effect (OHE) in the AC regime using bilayer graphene (BLG) as a prototypical material platform. While the unbiased BLG has gapless electronic spectra, applying a perpendicular electric field creates an energy band gap that can be continuously tuned from zero to high values. By exploiting this flexibility, we demonstrate the ability to control the behavior of AC orbital Hall conductivity. Particularly, we demonstrate that the orbital Hall conductivity at the neutrality point changes its signal at a critical frequency, the value of which is proportional to the perpendicular electric field. For BLG with narrow band gaps, the active frequency region for the AC OHE may extend to a few terahertz, which is experimentally accessible with current technologies. We also consider the introduction of a perpendicular magnetic field in the weak-coupling regime using first-order perturbation theory to illustrate how the breaking of time-reversal symmetry enables the emergence of the AC charge Hall effect in the charge-doped situation and modifies the AC orbital Hall conductivity. Our calculations suggest that BLG with narrow band gaps is a practical candidate for investigating time-dependent orbital angular momentum transport. Published by the American Physical Society 2024