Tunneling in an anisotropic cubic Dirac semi-metal

Abstract

Motivated by a recent first principles prediction of an anisotropic cubic Dirac semi-metal in a real material Tl(TeMo)$_3$, we study the behavior of electrons tunneling through a potential barrier in such systems. To clearly investigate effects from different contributions to the Hamiltonian we study the model in various limits. First, in the limit of a very thin material where the linearly dispersive $z$-direction is frozen out at zero momentum and the dispersion in the $x$-$y$ plane is rotationally symmetric. In this limit we find a Klein tunneling reminiscent of what is observed in single layer graphene and linearly dispersive Dirac semi-metals. Second, an increase in thickness of the material leads to the possibility of a non-zero momentum eigenvalue $k_z$ that acts as an effective mass term in the Hamiltonian. We find that these lead to a suppression of Klein tunneling. Third, the inclusion of an anisotropy parameter $\lambda\neq 1$ leads to a breaking of rotational invariance. Furthermore, we observed that for different values of incident angle $\theta$ and anisotropy parameter $\lambda$ the Hamiltonian supports different numbers of modes propagating to infinity. We display this effect in form of a diagram that is similar to a phase diagram of a distant detector. Fourth, we consider coexistence of both anisotropy and non-zero $k_z$ but do not find any effect that is unique to the interplay between non-zero momentum $k_z$ and anisotropy parameter $\lambda$. Last, we studied the case of a barrier that was placed in the linearly dispersive direction and found Klein tunneling $T-1\propto \theta^6+\mathcal{O}(\theta^8)$ that is enhanced when compared to the Klein tunneling in linear Dirac semi-metals or graphene where $T-1\propto \theta^2+\mathcal{O}(\theta^4)$.