Time flow in graphene and its implications on the cutoff frequency of ballistic graphene devices

This manuscript deals with time flow in ballistic graphene devices. It is commonly believed that in the ballistic regime the traversal time of carriers in gated graphene at normal incidence is just the ratio of the length of the device and the Fermi velocity. However, we show that the traversal time is much slower if the influence of metallic contacts on graphene is considered. Even the transmission at normal incidence becomes smaller than 1, contradicting yet another common belief. These unexpected effects are due to the transformation of Schrodinger electrons in the metallic contact into Dirac electrons in graphene and vice versa. As a direct consequence of these transformations, the ultimate performance of gated ballistic devices are much lower than expected, in agreement with experimental results. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3603050]