No Arabic abstract
We have calculated the optical conductivity of a disorder-free single graphene sheet in the presence of spin-orbit coupling, using the Kubo formalism. Both intrinsic and structural-inversion-asymmetry induced types of spin splitting are considered within a low-energy continuum theory. Analytical results are obtained that allow us to identify distinct features arising from spin-orbit couplings. We point out how optical-conductivity measurements could offer a way to determine the strengths of spin splitting due to various origins in graphene.
We study theoretically the minimal conductivity of monolayer graphene in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling. The Rashba spin-orbit interaction causes the low-energy bands to undergo trigonal-warping deformation and for energies smaller than the Lifshitz energy, the Fermi circle breaks up into parts, forming four separate Dirac cones. We calculate the minimal conductivity for an ideal strip of length $L$ and width $W$ within the Landauer--Buttiker formalism in a continuum and in a tight binding model. We show that the minimal conductivity depends on the relative orientation of the sample and the probing electrodes due to the interference of states related to different Dirac cones. We also explore the effects of finite system size and find that the minimal conductivity can be lowered compared to that of an infinitely wide sample.
We generate experimentally a honeycomb refractive index pattern in an atomic vapor cell using electromagnetically-induced transparency. We study experimentally and theoretically the propagation of polarized light beams in such photonic graphene. We demonstrate that an effective spin-orbit coupling appears as a correction to the paraxial beam equations because of the strong spatial gradients of the permittivity. It leads to the coupling of spin and angular momentum at the Dirac points of the graphene lattice. Our results suggest that the polarization degree plays an important role in many configurations where it has been previously neglected.
Graphene exhibits extraordinary electronic and mechanical properties, and extremely high thermal conductivity. Being a very stable atomically thick membrane that can be suspended between two leads, graphene provides a perfect test platform for studying thermal conductivity in two-dimensional systems, which is of primary importance for phonon transport in low-dimensional materials. Here we report experimental measurements and non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of thermal conduction in suspended single layer graphene as a function of both temperature and sample length. Interestingly and in contrast to bulk materials, when temperature at 300K, thermal conductivity keeps increasing and remains logarithmic divergence with sample length even for sample lengths much larger than the average phonon mean free path. This result is a consequence of the two-dimensional nature of phonons in graphene and provides fundamental understanding into thermal transport in two-dimensional materials.
We show that spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in InSe enables the optical transition across the principal band gap to couple with in-plane polarized light. This transition, enabled by $p_{x,y}leftrightarrow p_z$ hybridization due to intra-atomic SOC in both In and Se, can be viewed as a transition between two dominantly $s$- and $p_z$-orbital based bands, accompanied by an electron spin-flip. Having parametrized $mathbf{kcdot p}$ theory using first principles density functional theory we estimate the absorption for $sigma^{pm}$ circularly polarized photons in the monolayer as $sim 1.5%$, which saturates to $sim 0.3%$ in thicker films ($3-5$ layers). Circularly polarized light can be used to selectively excite electrons into spin-polarized states in the conduction band, which permits optical pumping of the spin polarization of In nuclei through the hyperfine interaction.
We present a systematic study of electron backscattering phenomena during conduction for graphene nanoribbons with single-vacancy scatterers and dimensions within the capabilities of modern lithographic techniques. Our analysis builds upon an textit{ab initio} parameterized semiempirical model that breaks electron-hole symmetry and nonequilibrium Greens function methods for the calculation of the conductance distribution $g$. The underlying mechanism is based on wavefunction localizations and perturbations that in the case of the first $pi-pi{}^*$ plateau can give rise to impurity-like pseudogaps with both donor and acceptor characteristics. Confinement and geometry are crucial for the manifestation of such effects. Self-consistent quantum transport calculations characterize vacancies as local charging centers that can induce electrostatic inhomogeneities on the ribbon topology.