No Arabic abstract
Electronic and transport properties of Graphene, a one-atom thick crystalline material, are sensitive to the presence of atoms adsorbed on its surface. An ensemble of randomly positioned adatoms, each serving as a scattering center, leads to the Bolzmann-Drude diffusion of charge determining the resistivity of the material. An important question, however, is whether the distribution of adatoms is always genuinely random. In this Article we demonstrate that a dilute adatoms on graphene may have a tendency towards a spatially correlated state with a hidden Kekule mosaic order. This effect emerges from the interaction between the adatoms mediated by the Friedel oscillations of the electron density in graphene. The onset of the ordered state, as the system is cooled below the critical temperature, is accompanied by the opening of a gap in the electronic spectrum of the material, dramatically changing its transport properties.
In frustrated quantum magnetism, chiral spin liquids are a particularly intriguing subset of quantum spin liquids in which the fractionalized parton degrees of freedom form a Chern insulator. Here we study an exactly solvable spin-3/2 model which harbors not only chiral spin liquids but also spin liquids with higher-order parton band topology -- a trivial band insulator, a Chern insulator with gapless chiral edge modes, and a second-order topological insulator with gapless corner modes. With a focus on the thermodynamic precursors and thermal phase transitions associated with these distinct states, we employ numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo simulations to reveal a number of unconventional phenomena. This includes a heightened thermal stability of the ground state phases, the emergence of a partial flux ordering of the associated $mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge field, and the formation of a thermal Majorana metal regime extending over a broad temperature range.
Intrinsic ripples with various configurations and sizes were reported to affect the physical and chemical properties of 2D materials. By performing molecular dynamics simulations and theoretical analysis, we use two geometric models of the ripple shape to explore numerically the distribution of ripples in graphene membrane. We focus on the ratio of ripple height to its diameter (t/D) which was recently shown to be the most relevant for chemical activity of graphene membranes. Our result demonstrates that the ripple density decreases as the coefficient t/D increases, in a qualitative agreement with the Boltzmann distribution derived analytically from the bending energy of the membrane. Our theoretical study provides also specific quantitative information on the ripple distribution in graphene and gives new insights applicable to other 2D materials.
We have performed density functional theory calculations of graphene decorated with carbon adatoms, which bind at the bridge site of a C--C bond. Earlier studies have shown that the C adatoms have magnetic moments and have suggested the possibility of ferromagnetism with high Curie temperature. Here we propose to use a gate voltage to fine tune the magnetic moments from zero to 1$mu_B$ while changing the magnetic coupling from antiferromagnetism to ferromagnetism and again to antiferromagnetism. These results are rationalized within the Stoner and RKKY models. When the SCAN meta-GGA correction is used, the magnetic moments for zero gate voltage are reduced and the Stoner band ferromagnetism is slightly weakened in the ferromagnetic region.
Using density-functional theory, we calculate the electronic bandstructure of single-layer graphene on top of hexagonal In_2Te_2 monolayers. The geometric configuration with In and Te atoms at centers of carbon hexagons leads to a Kekule texture with an ensuing bandgap of 20 meV. The alternative structure, nearly degenerate in energy, with the In and Te atoms on top of carbon sites is characterized instead by gapless spectrum with the original Dirac cones of graphene reshaped, depending on the graphene-indium chalcogenide distance, either in the form of an undoubled pseudo-spin one Dirac cone or in a quadratic band crossing point at the Fermi level. These electronic phases harbor charge fractionalization and topological Mott insulating states of matter.
We present a theoretical study of surface states close to 3d transition metal adatoms (Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni and Cu) on a Cu(111) surface in terms of an embedding technique using the fully relativistic Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker method. For each of the adatoms we found resonances in the s-like states to be attributed to a localization of the surface states in the presence of an impurity. We studied the change of the s-like densities of states in the vicinity of the surface state band-edge due to scattering effects mediated via the adatoms d-orbitals. The obtained results show that a magnetic impurity causes spin-polarization of the surface states. In particular, the long-range oscillations of the spin-polarized s-like density of states around an Fe adatom are demonstrated.