Zitterbewegung effect in graphene with spacially modulated potential

Abstract

The Zitterbewegung (ZB) effect is investigated in graphene with spacially modulated potential near the original Dirac point (ODP) and extra Dirac points (EDPs). Our calculations show that to get the large ZB oscillations, the wave packet center must be at the angle $\theta_0=0$ for EDPs located at zero-energy, or $\theta_0=\pi/2$ for both ODP and EDPs at finite energy $\varepsilon=m\pi$ ($m$ integer). By varying the parameters ($q_2, \mathbb{V}$) of the periodic potential and the initial momentum ($\kappa_0, \theta_0$) of Gaussian wave packet, it is found that the frequency of the ZB oscillations is in the range $[10^{7}~\text{Hz}, 10^{13}~\text{Hz}$] depending on what type of EDP is generated and the amplitude reaches hundreds of angstroms but their attenuation becomes very slow. More analysis of the frequency shows the possibilities in experimentally realizing the ZB effect in our system.