Quantized Transport in Graphene p-n Junctions in a Magnetic Field

Abstract

Recent experimental work on locally gated graphene layers resulting in p-n junctions has revealed the quantum Hall effect in their transport behavior. We explain the observed conductance quantization, which is fractional in the bipolar regime and an integer in the unipolar regime, in terms of quantum Hall edge modes propagating along and across the p-n interface. In the bipolar regime, the electron and hole modes can mix at the p-n boundary, leading to current partition and quantized shot-noise plateaus similar to those of conductance, whereas in the unipolar regime transport is noiseless. These quantum Hall phenomena reflect the massless Dirac character of charge carriers in graphene, with particle/hole interplay manifest in mode mixing and noise in the bipolar regime.