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 ($1/r^2$ instead of $1/r^3$), similarly to conventional 2D systems.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, v2: to match published versio

Coulomb Screening of 2D Massive Dirac Fermions

A model of 2D massive Dirac fermions, interacting with a instantaneous $1/r$ Coulomb interaction, is presented to mimic the physics of gapped graphene. The static polarization function is calculated explicitly to analyze screening effect at the finite temperature and density. Results are compared with the massless case . We also show that various other works can be reproduced within our model in a straightforward and unified manner

The effect of sublattice symmetry breaking on the electronic properties of a doped graphene

Motivated by a number of recent experimental studies, we have carried out the microscopic calculation of the quasiparticle self-energy and spectral function in a doped graphene when a symmetry breaking of the sublattices is occurred. Our systematic study is based on the many-body G$_0$W approach that is established on the random phase approximation and on graphene's massive Dirac equation continuum model. We report extensive calculations of both the real and imaginary parts of the quasiparticle self-energy in the presence of a gap opening. We also present results for spectral function, renormalized Fermi velocity and band gap renormalization of massive Dirac Fermions over a broad range of electron densities. We further show that the mass generating in graphene washes out the plasmaron peak in spectral weight.Comment: 22 Pages, 10 Figure

Short range Coulomb correlations render massive Dirac fermions massless

Tight binding electrons on a honeycomb lattice are described by an effective Dirac theory at low energies. Lowering symmetry by an alternate ionic potential ($\Delta$) generates a single-particle gap in the spectrum. We employ the dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) technique, to study the effect of on-site electron correlation ($U$) on massive Dirac fermions. For a fixed mass parameter $\Delta$, we find that beyond a critical value $U_{c1}(\Delta)$ massive Dirac fermions become massless. Further increasing $U$ beyond $U_{c2}(\Delta)$, there will be another phase transition to the Mott insulating state. Therefore the competition between the single-particle gap parameter, $\Delta$, and the Hubbard $U$ restores the semi-metallic nature of the parent Hamiltonian. The width of the intermediate semi-metallic regime shrinks by increasing the ionic potential. However, at small values of $\Delta$, there is a wide interval of $U$ values for which the system remains semi-metal.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure