Coherent field emission image of graphene predicted with a microscopic theory

Abstract

Electrons in the mono-layer atomic sheet of graphene have a long coherence length of the order of micrometers. We will show that this coherence is transmitted into the vacuum via electric field assisted electron emission from the graphene edge. The emission current density is given analytically. The parity of the carbon pi-electrons leads to an image whose center is dark as a result of interference. A dragonfly pattern with a dark body perpendicular to the edge is predicted for the armchair edge whose emission current density is vanishing with the mixing angle of the pseudo-spin. The interference pattern may be observed up to temperatures of thousand Kelvin as evidence of coherent field emission. Moreover, this phenomenon leads to a novel coherent electron line source that can produce interference patterns of extended objects with linear sizes comparable to the length of the graphene edge.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure