Photon-Induced Suppression of Interlayer Tunneling in Van Der Waals Heterostructures

We present a theory for interlayer tunneling in van der Waals heterostructures driven under a strong electromagnetic field, using graphene/hBN/graphene as a paradigmatic example. Our theory predicts that strong anti-resonances appear at bias voltage values equal to an integer multiple of the light frequency. These features are found to originate from photon-assisted resonant tunneling transitions between Floquet sidebands of different graphene layers, and are unique to two-band systems due to the interplay of both intraband and interband tunneling transitions. Our results point to the possibility of tunneling localization in van der Waals heterostructures using strong electromagnetic fields.