Landau-Zener tunneling in 2D periodic structures in the presence of a gauge field I: Tunneling rates

Abstract: We study the interband Landau-Zener tunneling of a quantum particle in the Hall configuration, i.e., in the presence of normal to the lattice plane gauge field (for example, magnetic field for a charged particle) and in-plane potential field (electric field for a charged particle). The interband tunneling is induced by the potential field and for vanishing gauge field is described by the common Landau-Zener theory. We generalize this theory for non-zero gauge field. The depletion rates of low-energy bands are calculated by using semi-analytical method of the truncated Floquet matrix.