Influence of magneto-coupling between the longitudinal motion component and transverse Landau orbits of an electron on transmission features in single quantum barriers

In this paper we study the influence of the magneto-coupling effect between the longitudinal motion component and the transverse Landau orbits of an electron on transmission features in single barrier structures. Within the parabolic conduction-band approach, a modified one-dimensional effective-mass Schrodinger equation, including the magneto-coupling effect generated from the position-dependent effective mass of the electron, is strictly derived. Numerical calculations for single barrier structures show that the magneto-coupling effect brings about a series of the important changes for the transmission probability, the above-barrier quasi-bound states, and the tunneling time. Through examining the variation of the above-barrier resonant-transmission spectrum with the barrier width and observing the well-defined Lorentzian line-shape of the above-barrier resonant peaks, we convincingly show that the above-barrier resonant transmission in single barrier structures is delivered by the above-barrier quasibound states in the barrier region, just as the below-barrier resonant tunneling in double barrier structures is mediated by the below-barrier quasi-bound states in the well. Furthermore, we come to the conclusion that the magneto-coupling effect brings about not only the splitting of the above-barrier quasi-bound levels but also the striking reduction of the level-width of the quasi-bound states, correspondingly, the substantial increase of the density of the quasi-bound states. We suggest that magneto-coupling effects may be observed by the measurements of the optical absorption spectrum associated with the above-barrier quasi-bound states in the single barrier structures.