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arXiv · 2609.19627

Quantum transport across normal-superlattice-normal graphene junctions: Fabry-Pérot interference, Hofstadter butterfly, and supersnake states

Abstract

Electrostatic modulation of graphene provides a tunable route to engineering miniband structures. We perform quantum transport simulations on a gate-defined graphene superlattice junction, formed by confining a two-dimensional superlattice graphene (SGr) region between two normal graphene (NGr) regions. In the low-field regime at low carrier densities, robust Fabry-Pérot interference fringes emerge even in the unipolar regime due to Fermi-velocity renormalization in the SGr region. At stronger magnetic fields but only up to 3 T, the conductance map clearly reveals the Hofstadter butterfly spectrum. At intermediate fields, our finite-width transport simulations reveal a new type of snake state, the supersnake state, composed of alternating anomalous cyclotron arcs on the SGr side and conventional semicircular arcs on the NGr side, forming a weaving trajectory along the junction. The resulting conductance oscillations agree well with geometrical conditions derived from semiclassical cyclotron orbits. Our results demonstrate that gate-defined NGr-SGr-NGr junctions provide a versatile platform hosting multiple transport regimes within a single device architecture and can be generalized to other types of superlattices not restricted to graphene.

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Che-Pin Hsu, Alina Mreńca-Kolasińska, Aitor Garcia-Ruiz, Szu-Chao Chen, Denis Kochan, Klaus Richter, Ming-Hao Liu. 2026-09-17. Quantum transport across normal-superlattice-normal graphene junctions: Fabry-Pérot interference, Hofstadter butterfly, and supersnake states. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19627

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