We study the effect of anisotropy (strain) on dynamical gap generation in graphene. We work with a low energy effective theory obtained from a tight-binding Hamiltonian expanded around the Dirac points in momentum space. We use a non-perturbative Schwinger-Dyson approach and calculate a coupled set of five momentum dependent dressing functions. Our results show that the critical coupling depends only weakly on the anisotropy parameter, and increases with greater anisotropy.
We theoretically investigate the quantum reflection of different atoms by two-dimensional (2D) materials of the graphene family (silicene, germanene, and stanene), subjected to an external electric field and circularly polarized light. By using Lifshitz theory to compute the Casimir-Polder potential, which ensures that our predictions apply to all regimes of atom-2D surface distances, we demonstrate that the quantum reflection probability exhibits distinctive, unambiguous signatures of topological phase transitions that occur in 2D materials. We also show that the quantum reflection probability can be highly tunable by these external agents, depending on the atom-surface combination, reaching a variation of 40% for Rubidium in the presence of a stanene sheet. Our findings attest that not only dispersive forces play a crucial role in quantum reflection, but also that the topological phase transitions of the graphene family materials can be comprehensively and efficiently probed via atom-surface interactions at the nanoscale.
The quantum Hall system can be used to study many-body physics owing to its multiple internal electronic degrees of freedom and tunability. While quantum phase transitions have been studied intensively, research on the temperature-induced phase transitions of this system is limited. We measured the pure bulk conductivity of a quantum Hall antiferromagnetic state in bilayer graphene over a wide range of temperatures and revealed the two-step phase transition associated with the breaking of the long-range order and short-range antiferromagnetic order. Our findings are fundamental to understanding electron correlation in quantum Hall systems.
Dirac electrons in graphene are to lowest order spin 1/2 particles, owing to the orbital symmetries at the Fermi level. However, anisotropic corrections in the $g$-factor appear due to the intricate spin-valley-orbit coupling of chiral electrons. We resolve experimentally the $g$-factor along the three orthogonal directions in a large-scale graphene sample. We employ a Hall bar structure with an external magnetic field of arbitrary direction, and extract the effective $g$-tensor via resistively-detected electron spin resonance. We employ a theoretical perturbative approach to identify the intrinsic and extrinsic spin orbit coupling and obtain a fundamental parameter inherent to the atomic structure of $^{12}$C, commonly used in ab-initio models.
Twisted bilayer graphene near the magic angle exhibits remarkably rich electron correlation physics, displaying insulating, magnetic, and superconducting phases. Here, using measurements of the local electronic compressibility, we reveal that these phases originate from a high-energy state with an unusual sequence of band populations. As carriers are added to the system, rather than filling all the four spin and valley flavors equally, we find that the population occurs through a sequence of sharp phase transitions, which appear as strong asymmetric jumps of the electronic compressibility near integer fillings of the moire lattice. At each transition, a single spin/valley flavor takes all the carriers from its partially filled peers, resetting them back to the vicinity of the charge neutrality point. As a result, the Dirac-like character observed near the charge neutrality reappears after each integer filling. Measurement of the in-plane magnetic field dependence of the chemical potential near filling factor one reveals a large spontaneous magnetization, further substantiating this picture of a cascade of symmetry breakings. The sequence of phase transitions and Dirac revivals is observed at temperatures well above the onset of the superconducting and correlated insulating states. This indicates that the state we reveal here, with its strongly broken electronic flavor symmetry and revived Dirac-like electronic character, is a key player in the physics of magic angle graphene, forming the parent state out of which the more fragile superconducting and correlated insulating ground states emerge.
We show that charge doping can induce transitions between three distinct adsorbate phases in hydrogenated and fluorinated graphene. By combining ab initio, approximate density functional theory and tight binding calculations we identify a transition from islands of C$_8$H$_2$ and C$_8$F$_2$ to random adsorbate distributions around a doping level of $pm 0.05$ e/C-atom. Furthermore, in situations with random adsorbate coverage, charge doping is shown to trigger an ordering transition where the sublattice symmetry is spontaneously broken when the doping level exceeds the adsorbate concentration. Rehybridization and lattice distortion energies make graphene which is covalently functionalized from one side only most susceptible to these two kinds of phase transitions. The energy gains associated with the clustering and ordering transitions exceed room temperature thermal energies.