Transmission of waves across atomic step discontinuities in discrete nanoribbon structures

Scalar wave propagation across a semi-infinite step or step-like discontinuity on any one boundary of the square lattice waveguides is considered within nearest-neighbour interaction approximation. An application of the Wiener–Hopf method does yield an exact solution of the discrete scattering problem, using which, as the main result of the paper, the transmission coefficients for energy flux are obtained. It is assumed that a wave mode is incident from either side of the step and the question addressed is what fraction of incident energy is transmitted across the atomic step discontinuity. A total of ten configurations are presented that arise due to various placements of discrete Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions on the waveguide. Numerical illustrations of a measure of ‘conductance’ are provided.