Photoinduced metallic Volkov-Pankratov states in semi-Dirac material

Abstract

We study the emergence of interfacial modes between the two regions of a semi-Dirac type material, which are illuminated by the left and right circularly polarized light, respectively. We show that a smooth boundary between the two regions give rise to an interfacial quantum well which is sensitive to the incoming electron's momentum. The quantum well is found to host the Volkov-Pankratov states which are gapless metallic in nature. Contrary to the inverted mass term, it is the inverted velocity term that induces such states across the boundary. We also note that incident electron can fully pass over the interfacial well without any reflection only at certain light parameters-known as {\it Ramsauer-Townsend} effect. Moreover, we also observe that such modes can even exist across the interface between the irradiated and non-irradiated regions under certain condition.