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 Physics at Virginia

"Graphene: how electrons move and interact in the ultimate flatland"


Enrico Rossi , College of William & Mary
[Host: Genya Kolomeisky]
ABSTRACT:
Graphene is a one atom-thick layer of carbon atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice that was first realized in a laboratory in 2004. In graphene the electrons are strictly con fined to live in two dimensions and behave as massless Dirac fermions described by two-dimensional Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED), albeit with a much lower (1/300 th) speed of light and bigger (≈ 1), and tunable, fine structure constant. Due to its unique electronic structure graphene exhibits anomalous electronic properties. In this talk I will discuss the unusual transport properties of graphene and provide a theoretical explanation of the "puzzles" posed by graphene transport measurements since its discovery. I will then discuss the eff ect of electron-electron interactions. Most of the experiments suggest that in single layer graphene the interactions have only a quantitative eff ect. However, recently very high quality graphene heterostructures have been realized and the experimental measurements conducted on them suggest that in these structures the interactions can drive the electrons into novel spontaneously broken symmetry ground states. I will present our theoretical study of "hybrid" heterostructures formed by one sheet of single layer graphene and one sheet of bilayer graphene and show that in these structures the spontaneously broken symmetry ground state is 2-fold degenerate with one of the degenerate states analogous to a superfluid chiral state. The chiral nature of one of the degenerate ground states opens the possibility to observe in graphene heterostructures topologically protected midgap states analogous to Majorana modes.
Colloquium
Friday, August 31, 2012
4:00 PM
Physics Building, Room 204
Note special time.
Note special room.

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