Optically induced resonant tunneling of electrons in nanostructures

Sci Rep. 2023 Nov 10;13(1):19625. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-46998-w.

Abstract

We developed the theory of elastic electron tunneling through a potential barrier driven by a strong high-frequency electromagnetic field. It is demonstrated that the driven barrier can be considered as a stationary two-barrier potential which contains the quasi-stationary electron states confined between these two barriers. When the energy of an incident electron coincides with the energy of the quasi-stationary state, the driven barrier becomes fully transparent for the electron (the resonant tunneling). The developed theory is applied to describe electron transport through a quantum point contact irradiated by an electromagnetic wave.