Cyclotron resonance of single-valley Dirac fermions in nearly gapless HgTe quantum wells

Abstract

We report on Landau level spectroscopy studies of two HgTe quantum wells (QWs) near or at the critical well thickness, where the band gap vanishes. In magnetic fields up to B=16 T, oriented perpendicular to the QW plane, we observe a B dependence for the energy of the dominant cyclotron resonance (CR) transition characteristic of two-dimensional Dirac fermions. The dominant CR line exhibits either a single or double absorption line shape for the gapless or gapped QW. Using an effective Dirac model, we deduce the band velocity of single-valley Dirac fermions in gapless HgTe quantum wells, vF=6.4×105 m/s, and interpret the double absorption of the gapped QW as resulting from the addition of a small relativistic mass. © 2014 American Physical Society.