The ground state construction of bilayer graphene

We consider a model of half-filled bilayer graphene, in which the three dominant Slonczewski-Weiss-McClure hopping parameters are retained, in the presence of short range interactions. Under a smallness assumption on the interaction strength $U$ as well as on the inter-layer hopping $\epsilon$, we construct the ground state in the thermodynamic limit, and prove its analyticity in $U$, uniformly in $\epsilon$. The interacting Fermi surface is degenerate, and consists of eight Fermi points, two of which are protected by symmetries, while the locations of the other six are renormalized by the interaction, and the effective dispersion relation at the Fermi points is conical. The construction reveals the presence of different energy regimes, where the effective behavior of correlation functions changes qualitatively. The analysis of the crossover between regimes plays an important role in the proof of analyticity and in the uniform control of the radius of convergence. The proof is based on a rigorous implementation of fermionic renormalization group methods, including determinant estimates for the renormalized expansion

Plate-nematic phase in three dimensions

We consider a system of anisotropic plates in the three-dimensional continuum, interacting via purely hard core interactions. We assume that the particles have a finite number of allowed orientations. In a suitable range of densities, we prove the existence of a uni-axial nematic phase, characterized by long range orientational order (the minor axes are aligned parallel to each other, while the major axes are not) and no translational order. The proof is based on a coarse graining procedure, which allows us to map the plate model into a contour model, and in a rigorous control of the resulting contour theory, via Pirogov-Sinai methods.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figure

A Pfaffian formula for monomer-dimer partition functions

We consider the monomer-dimer partition function on arbitrary finite planar graphs and arbitrary monomer and dimer weights, with the restriction that the only non-zero monomer weights are those on the boundary. We prove a Pfaffian formula for the corresponding partition function. As a consequence of this result, multipoint boundary monomer correlation functions at close packing are shown to satisfy fermionic statistics. Our proof is based on the celebrated Kasteleyn theorem, combined with a theorem on Pfaffians proved by one of the authors, and a careful labeling and directing procedure of the vertices and edges of the graph.Comment: Added referenc