No Arabic abstract
We study the band structure and the density of states of graphene in the presence of a next-to-nearest-neighbor coupling (N2) and a third-nearest-neighbor coupling (N3). We show that for values of N3 larger or equal to 1/3 of the value of the nearest-neighbor hopping (NN), extra Dirac points appear in the spectrum. If N3 is exactly equal to 1/3 NN, the new Dirac points are localized at the M points of the Brillouin zone and are hybrid: the electrons have a linear dispersion along the GammaM direction and a quadratic dispersion along the perpendicular direction MK. For larger values of N3 the new points have a linear dispersion, and are situated along the MK line. For a value of N3 equal to 1/2 NN, these points merge with the Dirac cones at the K points, yielding a gapless quadratic dispersion around K, while for larger values each quadratic point at K splits again into four Dirac points. The effects of changing the N2 coupling are not so dramatic. We calculate the density of states and we show that increasing the N3 coupling lowers the energy of the Van Hove singularities, and when N3 is larger than 1/3 NN the Van Hove singularities split in two, giving rise to extra singularities at low energies.
The charge carrier density in graphene on a dielectric substrate such as SiO$_2$ displays inhomogeneities, the so-called charge puddles. Because of the linear dispersion relation in monolayer graphene, the puddles are predicted to grow near charge neutrality, a markedly distinct property from conventional two-dimensional electron gases. By performing scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy on a mesoscopic graphene device, we directly observe the puddles growth, both in spatial extent and in amplitude, as the Dirac point is approached. Self-consistent screening theory provides a unified description of both the macroscopic transport properties and the microscopically observed charge disorder.
The dynamical approach is applied to ballistic transport in mesoscopic graphene samples of length L and contact potential U. At times shorter than both relevant time scales, the flight time and hslash/U, the major effect of the electric field is to create electron - hole pairs, i.e. causing interband transitions. In linear response this leads (for width W>>L) to conductivity pi/2 e^{2}/h. On the other hand, at times lager than the two scales the mechanism and value are different. It is shown that the conductivity approaches its intraband value, equal to the one obtained within the Landauer-Butticker approach resulting from evanescent waves. It is equal to 4/pi e^{2}/h for W>>L. The interband transitions, within linear response, are unimportant in this limit. Between these extremes there is a crossover behaviour dependent on the ratio between the two time scales. At strong electric fields (beyond linear reponse) the interband process dominates. The electron-hole mechanism is universal, namely does not depend on geometry (aspect ratio, topology of boundary conditions, properties of leads), while the evanescent modes mechanism depends on all of them. On basis of the results we determine, that while in absorption measurements and in DC transport in suspended graphene the first conductivity value was measured, the latter one would appear in experiments on small ballistic graphene flakes on substrate.
We present an experimental study of nonlocal electrical signals near the Dirac point in graphene. The in-plane magnetic field dependence of the nonlocal signal confirms the role of spin in this effect, as expected from recent predictions of Zeeman spin Hall effect in graphene, but our experiments show that thermo-magneto-electric effects also contribute to nonlocality, and the effect is sometimes stronger than that due to spin. Thermal effects are seen to be very sensitive to sample details that do not influence other transport parameters.
Effects of disorder on the electronic transport properties of graphene are strongly affected by the Dirac nature of the charge carriers in graphene. This is particularly pronounced near the Dirac point, where relativistic charge carriers cannot efficiently screen the impurity potential. We have studied time-dependent conductance fluctuations and magnetoresistance in graphene in the close vicinity of the Dirac point. We show that the fluctuations are due to the quantum interference effects due to scattering on impurities, and find an unusually large reduction of the relative noise power in magnetic field, possibly indicating that an additional symmetry plays an important role in this regime.
Materials with massless Dirac fermions can possess exceptionally strong and widely tunable optical nonlinearities. Experiments on graphene monolayer have indeed found very large third-order nonlinear responses, but the reported variation of the nonlinear optical coefficient by orders of magnitude is not yet understood. A large part of the difficulty is the lack of information on how doping or chemical potential affects the different nonlinear optical processes. Here we report the first experimental study, in corroboration with theory, on third harmonic generation (THG) and four-wave mixing (FWM) in graphene that has its chemical potential tuned by ion-gel gating. THG was seen to have enhanced by ~30 times when pristine graphene was heavily doped, while difference-frequency FWM appeared just the opposite. The latter was found to have a strong divergence toward degenerate FWM in undoped graphene, leading to a giant third-order nonlinearity. These truly amazing characteristics of graphene come from the possibility to gate-control the chemical potential, which selectively switches on and off one- and multi-photon resonant transitions that coherently contribute to the optical nonlinearity, and therefore can be utilized to develop graphene-based nonlinear optoelectronic devices.