Magnetic field-tunable valley-contrasting pseudomagnetic confinement in graphene

Abstract: Introducing quantum confinement has uncovered a rich set of interesting quantum phenomena and allows one to directly probe the physics of confined (quasi-)particles. In most experiments, however, electrostatic potential is the only available method to generate the quantum confinement in a continuous system. Here, we demonstrated experimentally that inhomogeneous pseudomagnetic fields in strained graphene can introduce exotic quantum confinement of massless Dirac fermions. The pseudomagnetic fields have opposite directions in the two distinct valleys of graphene. By tuning real magnetic field, the total effective magnetic fields in the two valleys are imbalanced. Then, we realized valley-contrasting spatial confinement, which lifts the valley degeneracy and results in field-tunable valley-polarized confined states in graphene. Our results provide a new avenue to manipulate the valley degree of freedom.