Density of states as a probe of electrostatic confinement in graphene

Abstract

We theoretically analyze the possibility to confine electrons in single-layer graphene with the help of metallic gates, via the evaluation of the density of states of such a gate-defined quantum dot in the presence of a ring-shaped metallic contact. The possibility to electrostatically confine electrons in a gate-defined ``quantum dot'' with finite-carrier density, surrounded by an undoped graphene sheet, strongly depends on the integrability of the electron dynamics in the quantum dot. With the present calculations we can quantitatively compare confinement in dots with integrable and chaotic dynamics, and verify the prediction that the Berry phase associated with the pseudospin leads to partial confinement in situations where no confinement is expected according to the arguments relying on the classical dynamics only.