Semiclassical approach to bound states of a pointlike impurity in a two-dimensional Dirac system

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to provide an intuitive and useful tool for analyzing the impurity-bound-state problem. We develop a semiclassical approach and apply it to an impurity in two-dimensional systems with parabolic or Dirac-like bands. Our method consists of reducing a higher-dimensional problem into a sum of one-dimensional ones using the two-dimensional Green's functions as a guide. We then analyze the one-dimensional effective systems in the spirit of the wave-function-matching method as in the standard one-dimensional quantum model. We demonstrate our method on two-dimensional models with parabolic and Dirac-like dispersion, with the later specifically relevant to topological insulators. © 2014 American Physical Society.