Quantum Hall Effects in Silicene

Abstract

We investigate quantum Hall effects in silicene by applying electric field E z parallel to magnetic field. Silicene is a monolayer of silicon atoms forming a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice, and shares almost every remarkable property with graphene. A new feature is its buckled structure, due to which the band structure can be controlled externally by changing E z . The low energy physics of silicene is described by massive Dirac fermions, where the mass is a function of E z and becomes zero at the critical field E cr . We show that there are no zero energy states due to the Dirac mass term except at the critical electric field E cr . Furthermore it is shown that the 4-fold degenerate zero-energy states are completely resolved even without considering Coulomb interactions. These features are highly contrasted with those in graphene, demonstrating that silicene has a richer structure. The prominent feature is that, by applying the electric field, we can control the valley degeneracy. As a function of E z , Hall plateaux appear at the filling factors ν= 0, ±1, ±2, ±3, ... except for the points where level crossings occur.