Single-cone finite-difference schemes for the (2+1)-dimensional Dirac equation in general electromagnetic textures

Reflectionless Klein tunneling of Dirac fermions: comparison of split-operator and staggered-lattice discretization of the Dirac equation

Massless Dirac fermions in an electric field propagate along the field lines without backscattering, due to the combination of spin-momentum locking and spin conservation. This phenomenon, known as 'Klein tunneling', may be lost if the Dirac equation is discretized in space and time, because of scattering between multiple Dirac cones in the Brillouin zone. To avoid this, a staggered space-time lattice discretization has been developed in the literature, withonesingle Dirac cone in the Brillouin zone of the original square lattice. Here we show that the staggering doubles the size of the Brillouin zone, which actually containstwoDirac cones. We find that this fermion doubling causes a spurious breakdown of Klein tunneling, which can be avoided by an alternative single-cone discretization scheme based on a split-operator approach.

Perfectly matched layers for the Dirac equation in general electromagnetic texture

Perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary conditions are constructed for the Dirac equation and general electromagnetic potentials. A PML extension is performed for the partial differential equation and two versions of a staggered-grid single-cone finite-difference scheme. For the latter, PML auxiliary functions are computed either within a Crank-Nicholson scheme or one derived from the formal continuum solution in integral form. Stability conditions are found to be more stringent than for the original scheme. Spectral properties under spatially uniform PML confirm damping of any out-propagating wave contributions. Numerical tests deal with static and time-dependent electromagnetic textures in the boundary regions for parameters characteristic for topological insulator surfaces. When compared to the alternative imaginary-potential method, PML offers vastly improved wave absorption owing to a more efficient suppression of back-reflection. Remarkably, this holds for time-dependent textures as well, making PML a useful approach for transient transport simulations of Dirac fermion systems.