7 research outputs found
Dynamical polarization, screening, and plasmons in gapped graphene
The one-loop polarization function of graphene has been calculated at zero
temperature for arbitrary wavevector, frequency, chemical potential (doping),
and band gap. The result is expressed in terms of elementary functions and is
used to find the dispersion of the plasmon mode and the static screening within
the random phase approximation. At long wavelengths the usual square root
behaviour of plasmon spectra for two-dimensional (2D) systems is obtained. The
presence of a small (compared to a chemical potential) gap leads to the
appearance of a new undamped plasmon mode. At greater values of the gap this
mode merges with the long-wavelength one, and vanishes when the Fermi level
enters the gap. The screening of charged impurities at large distances differs
from that in gapless graphene by slower decay of Friedel oscillations (
instead of ), similarly to conventional 2D systems.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, v2: to match published versio
Electronic structure of triangular, hexagonal and round graphene flakes near the Fermi level
The electronic shell structure of triangular, hexagonal and round graphene
quantum dots (flakes) near the Fermi level has been studied using a
tight-binding method. The results show that close to the Fermi level the shell
structure of a triangular flake is that of free massless particles, and that
triangles with an armchair edge show an additional sequence of levels ("ghost
states"). These levels result from the graphene band structure and the plane
wave solution of the wave equation, and they are absent for triangles with an
zigzag edge. All zigzag triangles exhibit a prominent edge state at the Fermi
level, and few low-energy conduction electron states occur both in triangular
and hexagonal flakes due to symmetry reasons. Armchair triangles can be used as
building blocks for other types of flakes that support the ghost states. Edge
roughness has only a small effect on the level structure of the triangular
flakes, but the effect is considerably enhanced in the other types of flakes.
In round flakes, the states near the Fermi level depend strongly on the flake
radius, and they are always localized on the zigzag parts of the edge
Strain-induced Evolution of Electronic Band Structures in a Twisted Graphene Bilayer
Here we study the evolution of local electronic properties of a twisted
graphene bilayer induced by a strain and a high curvature. The strain and
curvature strongly affect the local band structures of the twisted graphene
bilayer; the energy difference of the two low-energy van Hove singularities
decreases with increasing the lattice deformations and the states condensed
into well-defined pseudo-Landau levels, which mimic the quantization of massive
Dirac fermions in a magnetic field of about 100 T, along a graphene wrinkle.
The joint effect of strain and out-of-plane distortion in the graphene wrinkle
also results in a valley polarization with a significant gap, i.e., the
eight-fold degenerate Landau level at the charge neutrality point is splitted
into two four-fold degenerate quartets polarized on each layer. These results
suggest that strained graphene bilayer could be an ideal platform to realize
the high-temperature zero-field quantum valley Hall effect.Comment: 4 figure
Observation of Van Hove singularities in twisted graphene layers
Electronic instabilities at the crossing of the Fermi energy with a Van Hove
singularity in the density of states often lead to new phases of matter such as
superconductivity, magnetism or density waves. However, in most materials this
condition is difficult to control. In the case of single-layer graphene, the
singularity is too far from the Fermi energy and hence difficult to reach with
standard doping and gating techniques. Here we report the observation of
low-energy Van Hove singularities in twisted graphene layers seen as two
pronounced peaks in the density of states measured by scanning tunneling
spectroscopy. We demonstrate that a rotation between stacked graphene layers
can generate Van Hove singularities, which can be brought arbitrarily close to
the Fermi energy by varying the angle of rotation. This opens intriguing
prospects for Van Hove singularity engineering of electronic phases.Comment: 21 pages 5 figure