Semiclassical theory of potential scattering for massless Dirac fermions

K. J. A. Reijnders, T. Tudorovskiy, M. I. Katsnelson

Published 2012-06-13, updated 2013-04-29Version 3

In this paper we study scattering of two-dimensional massless Dirac fermions by a potential that depends on a single Cartesian variable. Depending on the energy of the incoming particle and its angle of incidence, there are three different regimes of scattering. To find the reflection and transmission coefficients in these regimes, we apply the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB), also called semiclassical, approximation. We use the method of comparison equations to extend our prediction to nearly normal incidence, where the conventional WKB method should be modified due to the degeneracy of turning points. We compare our results to numerical calculations and find good agreement.