Electronic analogue of Fourier optics with massless Dirac fermions scattered by quantum dot lattice

Abstract

Abstract The field of electron optics exploits the analogy between the movement of electrons or charged quasiparticles, primarily in two-dimensional materials subjected to electric and magnetic (EM) fields and the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a dielectric medium with varied refractive index. We significantly extend this analogy by introducing an electronic analogue of Fourier optics dubbed as Fourier electron optics (FEO) with massless Dirac fermions (MDF), namely the charge carriers of single-layer graphene under ambient conditions, by considering their scattering from a two-dimensional quantum dot lattice (TDQDL) treated within Lippmann–Schwinger formalism. By considering the scattering of MDF from TDQDL with a defect region, as well as the moiré pattern of twisted TDQDLs, we establish an electronic analogue of Babinet’s principle in optics. Exploiting the similarity of the resulting differential scattering cross-section with the Fraunhofer diffraction pattern, we construct a dictionary for such FEO. Subsequently, we evaluate the resistivity of such scattered MDF using the Boltzmann approach as a function of the angle made between the direction of propagation of these charge-carriers and the symmetry axis of the dot-lattice, and Fourier analyze them to show that the spatial frequency associated with the angle-resolved resistivity gets filtered according to the structural changes in the dot lattice, indicating wider applicability of FEO of MDF.