Spin-orbit effects in a graphene bipolar pn junction

Abstract

A graphene $pn$ junction is studied theoretically in the presence of both intrinsic and Rashba spin-orbit couplings. We show that a crossover from perfect reflection to perfect transmission is achieved at normal incidence by tuning the perpendicular electric field. By further studying angular dependent transmission, we demonstrate that perfect reflection at normal incidence can be clearly distinguished from trivial band gap effects. We also investigate how spin-orbit effects modify the conductance and the Fano factor associated with a potential step in both $nn$ and $np$ cases.