We present a joint theory-experiment study on the transmission/absorption saturation after ultrafast pulse excitation in graphene. We reveal an unconventional double-bended saturation behavior: Both bendings separately follow the standard saturation model exhibiting two saturation fluences, however, the corresponding fluences differ by three orders of magnitude and have different physical origin. Our results reveal that this new and unexpected behavior can be ascribed to an interplay between fluence- and time-dependent many-particle scattering processes and phase-space filling effects.
Radiative heat transfer between two bodies saturates at very short separation distances due to the nonlocal optical response of the materials. In this work, we show that the presence of radiative interactions with a third body or external bath can also induce a saturation of the heat transfer, even at separation distances for which the optical response of the materials is purely local. We demonstrate that this saturation mechanism is a direct consequence of a thermalization process resulting from many-body interactions in the system. This effect could have an important impact in the field of nanoscale thermal management of complex systems and in the interpretation of measured signals in thermal metrology at the nanoscale.
Interactions between charge carriers in graphene lead to logarithmic renormalization of observables mimicking the behavior known in (3+1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (QED). Here we analyze soft electron-hole (e-h) excitations generated as a result of fast charge dynamics, a direct analog of the signature QED effect - multiple soft photons produced by the QED vacuum shakeup. We show that such excitations are generated in photon absorption, when a photogenerated high-energy e-h pair cascades down in energy and gives rise to multiple soft e-h excitations. This fundamental process is manifested in a double-log divergence in the emission rate of soft pairs and a characteristic power-law divergence in their energy spectrum of the form $frac{1}{omega}ln left(frac{omega}{Delta}right) $. Strong carrier-carrier interactions make pair production a prominent pathway in the photoexcitation cascade.
We investigate the contribution of charge puddles to the non-vanishing conductivity minimum in disordered graphene flakes at the charge neutrality point. For that purpose, we study systems with a geometry that suppresses the transmission due to evanescent modes allowing to single out the effect of charge fluctuations in the transport properties. We use the recursive Greens functions technique to obtain local and total transmissions through systems that mimic vanishing density of states at the charge neutrality point in the presence of a local disordered local potential to model the charge puddles. Our microscopic model includes electron-electron interactions via a spin resolved Hubbard mean field term. We establish the relation between the charge puddle disorder potential and the electronic transmission at the charge neutrality point. We discuss the implications of our findings to high mobility graphene samples deposited on different substrates and provide a qualitative interpretation of recent experimental results.
Graphene is an ideal material to study fundamental Coulomb- and phonon-induced carrier scattering processes. Its remarkable gapless and linear band structure opens up new carrier relaxation channels. In particular, Auger scattering bridging the valence and the conduction band changes the number of charge carriers and gives rise to a significant carrier multiplication - an ultrafast many-particle phenomenon that is promising for the design of highly efficient photodetectors. Furthermore, the vanishing density of states at the Dirac point combined with ultrafast phonon-induced intraband scattering results in an accumulation of carriers and a population inversion suggesting the design of graphene-based terahertz lasers. Here, we review our work on the ultrafast carrier dynamics in graphene and Landau-quantized graphene is presented providing a microscopic view on the appearance of carrier multiplication and population inversion.
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.