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The Split-Operator Technique for the Study of Spinorial Wavepacket Dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2015

A. Chaves ,
G. A. Farias ,
F. M. Peeters  and
R. Ferreira
A. Chaves*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Caixa Postal 6030, Campus do Pici, 60455-900 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
G. A. Farias
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Caixa Postal 6030, Campus do Pici, 60455-900 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
F. M. Peeters
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Caixa Postal 6030, Campus do Pici, 60455-900 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil Department of Physics, University of Antwerp, Groenenborgerlaan 171, B-2020 Antwerp, Belgium
R. Ferreira
Affiliation:
Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Caixa Postal 6030, Campus do Pici, 60455-900 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain, Ecole Normale Superieure, 24 Rue Lhomond, F-75005, Paris, France
*
*Corresponding author. Email addresses: andrey@fisica.ufc.br (A. Chaves), gil@fisica.ufc.br (G. A. Farias), francois.peeters@uantwerpen.be (F. M. Peeters), robson.ferreira@lpa.ens.fr (R. Ferreira)
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Abstract

The split-operator technique for wave packet propagation in quantum systems is expanded here to the case of propagatingwave functions describing Schrödinger particles, namely, charge carriers in semiconductor nanostructures within the effective mass approximation, in the presence of Zeeman effect, as well as of Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions. We also demonstrate that simple modifications to the expanded technique allow us to calculate the time evolution of wave packets describing Dirac particles, which are relevant for the study of transport properties in graphene.

Keywords

73.21.Hb73.63.Nm73.43.CdWave packet propagationspin-orbit couplinggraphenesemiconductor heterostructures
Type
Research Article
Information
Communications in Computational Physics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , March 2015 , pp. 850 - 866
Copyright
Copyright © Global-Science Press 2015 

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