Quantum Hall Effects in Silicene

Motohiko Ezawa

Published 2012-02-07Version 1

We investigate quantum Hall effects in silicene by applying electric field $E_z$ parallel to magnetic field. Silicene is a monolayer of silicon atoms forming a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice, and shares almost every remarkable property with graphene. A new feature is its buckled structure, due to which the band structure can be controlled externally by changing $E_z$. The low energy physics of silicene is described by massive Dirac fermions, where the mass is a function of $E_z$ and becomes zero at the critical field $E_{\text{cr}}$. We show that there are no zero energy states due to the Dirac mass term except at the critical electric field $E_{\text{cr}}$. Furthermore it is shown that the 4-fold degenerate zero-energy states are completely resolved even without considering Coulomb interactions. These features are highly contrasted with those in graphene, demonstrating that silicene has a richer structure. The prominent feature is that, by applying the electric field, we can control the valley degeneracy. As a function of $E_z$, Hall plateaux appear at the filling factors $\nu =0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\pm 3,...$ except for the points where level crossings occur.