Shot noise generated by graphene p-n junctions in the quantum Hall effect regime

Abstract

Graphene offers a unique system to investigate transport of Dirac Fermions at p-n junctions. In a magnetic field, combination of quantum Hall physics and the characteristic transport across p-n junctions leads to a fractionally quantized conductance associated with the mixing of electron-like and hole-like modes and their subsequent partitioning. The mixing and partitioning suggest that a p-n junction could be used as an electronic beam splitter. Here we report the shot noise study of the mode-mixing process and demonstrate the crucial role of the p-n junction length. For short p-n junctions, the amplitude of the noise is consistent with an electronic beam-splitter behaviour, whereas, for longer p-n junctions, it is reduced by the energy relaxation. Remarkably, the relaxation length is much larger than typical size of mesoscopic devices, encouraging using graphene for electron quantum optics and quantum information processing.