External gates and transport in biased bilayer graphene

Dimitrie Culcer, R. Winkler

Published 2008-11-26, updated 2009-03-02Version 2

We formulate a theory of transport in graphene bilayers in the weak momentum scattering regime in such a way as to take into account contributions to the electrical conductivity to leading and next-to-leading order in the scattering potential. The response of bilayers to an electric field cannot be regarded as a sum of terms due to individual layers. Rather, interlayer tunneling and coherence between positive- and negative-energy states give the main contributions to the conductivity. At low energies, the dominant effect of scattering on transport comes from scattering within each energy band, yet a simple picture encapsulating the role of collisions in a set of scattering times is not applicable. Coherence between positive- and negative-energy states gives, as in monolayers, a term in the conductivity which depends on the order of limits. The application of an external gate, which introduces a gap between positive- and negative-energy states, does not affect transport. Nevertheless the solution to the kinetic equation in the presence of such a gate is very revealing for transport in both bilayers and monolayers.