Recently the negative refraction is extensively studied in the field of optics. The negative refraction was first studied theoretically in 1968 by Veselago [1], but it had not extensively been studied until the design of metamaterials with negative permeability [2] and the proposal of perfect lenses [3]. Perfect lenses make it possible to amplify evanescent waves and to achieve subwavelength resolution.
The negative refraction of electrons was first studied theoretically by Zhang et al. [4]. They showed that the transmission across interfaces of uniaxial bicrystals is reflectionless. Subsequently a general discussion on complementary media was presented, where complementary media are materials that reproduce the information of amplitude and phase of waves in original media and cause negative refraction [5]. It was shown that electron-hole junctions are complementary systems of electrons and they may be used for subsurface imaging with subwavelength resolution by scanning tunneling microscopy [5]. However, since the effective-mass approximation is used in these studies, it is not clear whether the results in these studies are true in realistic systems and can be observed experimentally.
The purpose of the present study is to study the complementary systems
beyond the effective-mass approximation. We present a theoretical study on electron transmission through complementary semiconductor heterojunctions
based on atomistic calculations of the electronic structures of the semiconductor junctions.
References:
[1] V. G. Veselago, Sov. Phys. Usp. 10 (1968) 509.
[2] J. B. Pendry et al., IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech. 47 (1999) 2075.
[3] J. B. Pendry, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (2000) 3966.
[4] Y. Zhang, B. Flugel and A. Mascarenhas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 (2003) 157404.
[5] K. Kobayashi, J. Phys. Condens. Matter 18 (2006) 3703.
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