The strong Coulomb interaction between massless Dirac fermions can drive a semimetal-insulator transition in single-layer graphene by dynamically generating an excitonic fermion gap. There is a critical interaction strength $λ_c$ that separates the semimetal phase from the insulator phase. We calculate the specific heat and susceptibility of the system and show that they exhibit distinct behaviors in the semimetal and insulator phases.
We study interaction effects, including both long-ranged Coulomb and short-range interactions, in three-dimensional topological triple-Weyl semimetals whose triple-Weyl points are protected by crystal symmetries. By performing Wilsonian renormalization group analysis of the low-energy effective field theory of the minimal model with triple-Weyl nodes, we find that the fixed point of noninteracting triple-Weyl fermions is unstable in the presence of Coulomb interactions and flows to a nontrivial stable fixed point representing marginal Fermi liquids with anisotropic screening effects. We furthe…
We study the fate of double-Weyl fermions in three-dimensional systems in the presence of long-range Coulomb interactions. By employing the momentum-shell renormalization group approach, we find that the fixed point of noninteracting double-Weyl fermions is unstable against Coulomb interactions and flows to a nontrivial stable fixed point with anisotropic screening effect. Moreover, experimentally measurable quantities such as specific heat obtain unusual logarithmic corrections. We also discuss implications of our results to three-dimensional materials HgCr2Se4 and SrSi2, candidate materials …
Proximity of two different materials leads to an intricate coupling of quasiparticles so that an unprecedented electronic state is often realized at the interface. Here, we demonstrate a resonance-type many-body ground state in graphene, a non-magnetic two-dimensional Dirac semimetal, when grown on SmB6, a Kondo insulator, via thermal decomposition of fullerene molecules. This ground state is typically observed in three-dimensional magnetic materials with correlated electrons. Above the characteristic Kondo temperature of the substrate, the electron band structure of pristine graphene remains …
We report on a fully self-consistent Hartree-Fock calculation of interaction effects on the Moiré flat bands of twisted bilayer graphene, assuming that valley U(1) symmetry is respected. We use realistic band structures and interactions and focus on the charge neutrality point, where experiments have variously reported either insulating or semimetallic behavior. Restricting the search to orders for which the valley U(1) symmetry remains unbroken, we find three types of self-consistent solutions with competitive ground state energy (i) insulators that break $C_2 {\mathcal T}$ symmetry, includin…
There is a close connection between various new phenomena in Weyl semimetals and the existence of linear band crossings in the single particle description. We show, by a full self-consistent mean-field calculation, how this picture is modified in the presence of long-range Coulomb interactions. The chiral symmetry breaking occurs at strong enough interactions and the internode interband excitonic pairing channel is found to be significant, which determines the gap-opened band profile varying with interaction strength. Remarkably, in the resultant interacting phase, finite band Chern number jum…
Taking into account the interplay between the disorder and Coulomb interaction, the phase diagram of three-dimensional anisotropic Weyl semimetal is studied by renormalization group theory. Weak disorder is irrelevant in anisotropic Weyl semimetal, while the disorder becomes relevant and drives a quantum phase transition from semimetal to compressible diffusive metal phases if the disorder strength is larger than a critical value. The long-range Coulomb interaction is irrelevant in clean anisotropic Weyl semimetal. However, interestingly, we find that the long-range Coulomb interaction exerts …
We study the effects of strong $1/r$ long-range Coulomb interactions in a Weyl semimetal. We consider a three-dimensional (3D) Dirac fermion system on a lattice with a time-reversal symmetry breaking term, and take into account $1/r$ long-range Coulomb interactions between the bulk electrons. This model is regarded as the case where magnetic impurities are doped into the bulk of a 3D topological insulator. With the use of the strong coupling expansion of the lattice gauge theory and the mean-field approximation, we analyze the system from the strong coupling limit. It is shown that parity symm…
Using a novel structure, consisting of two, independently contacted graphene single layers separated by an ultra-thin dielectric, we experimentally measure the Coulomb drag of massless fermions in graphene. At temperatures higher than 50 K, the Coulomb drag follows a temperature and carrier density dependence consistent with the Fermi liquid regime. As the temperature is reduced, the Coulomb drag exhibits giant fluctuations with an increasing amplitude, thanks to the interplay between coherent transport in the graphene layer and interaction between the two layers.
The low-energy theory of graphene exhibits spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking due to pairing of quasiparticles and holes, corresponding to a semimetal-insulator transition at strong Coulomb coupling. We report a Lattice Monte Carlo study of the critical exponents of this transition as a function of the number of Dirac flavors $N_f^{}$, finding $δ= 1.25 \pm 0.05$ for $N_f^{} = 0$, $δ= 2.26 \pm 0.06$ for $N_f^{} = 2$ and $δ= 2.62 \pm 0.11$ for $N_f^{} = 4$, with $γ\simeq 1$ throughout. We compare our results with recent analytical work for graphene and closely related systems, and discuss scen…
Recently there have been several proposals of materials predicted to be nodal-ring semimetals, where zero energy excitations are characterized by a nodal ring in the momentum space. This class of materials falls between the Dirac-like semimetals and the more conventional Fermi-surface systems. As a step towards understanding this unconventional system, we explore the effects of the long-range Coulomb interaction. Due to the vanishing density of states at the Fermi level, Coulomb interaction is only partially screened and remains long-ranged. Through renormalization group and large-$N_f$ comput…
Using soft x-ray angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy we probed the bulk electronic structure of Td MoTe2. We found that on-site Coulomb interaction leads to a Lifshitz transition, which is essential for a precise description of the electronic structure. A hybrid Weyl semimetal state with a pair of energy bands touching at both type-I and type-II Weyl nodes is indicated by comparing the experimental data with theoretical calculations. Unveiling the importance of Coulomb interaction opens up a new route to comprehend the unique properties of MoTe2, and is significant for understanding the …
We study the excitonic semimetal-insulator quantum phase transition in three-dimensional Dirac semimetal in which the fermion dispersion is strongly anisotropic. After solving the Dyson-Schwinger equation for the excitonic gap, we obtain a global phase diagram in the plane spanned by the parameter for Coulomb interaction strength and the parameter for fermion velocity anisotropy. We find that excitonic gap generation is promoted as the interaction becomes stronger, but is suppressed if the anisotropy increases. Applying our results to two realistic three-dimensional Dirac semimetals Na$_{3}$Bi…
A sufficiently strong long-range Coulomb interaction can induce excitonic pairing in gapless Dirac semimetals, which generates a finite gap and drives semimetal-insulator quantum phase transition. This phenomenon is in close analogy to dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in high energy physics. In most realistic Dirac semimetals, including suspended graphene, Coulomb interaction is too weak to open an excitonic gap. The Coulomb interaction plays a more important role at low energies in a two-dimensional semi-Dirac semimetal, in which the fermion spectrum is linear in one component of momenta an…
We have investigated the Coulomb screening properties and collective excitations in a graphene bilayer. The static screening effect is anisotropic and is much stronger in the undoped graphene bilayer than in a monolayer graphene [1]. The dynamic screening shows the properties of a Dirac gas in the low frequency and that of a Fermi gas in the high frequency. The transition from the Dirac to the Fermi gas is also observed in the plasmon spectrum. Finally, we find that an electron gas in a doped graphene bilayer has quite similar properties as those of a Fermi gas in materials containing two ener…
We study interacting Dirac quasiparticles in disordered graphene and find that an interplay between the unscreened Coulomb interactions and pseudo-relativistic quasiparticle kinematics can be best revealed in the ballistic regime, whereas in the diffusive limit the behavior is qualitatively (albeit, not quantitatively) similar to that of the ordinary 2DEG with parabolic dispersion. We calculate the quasiparticle width and density of states that can be probed by photoemission, tunneling, and magnetization measurements.
We present results from Monte Carlo simulations of a three dimensional fermionic field theory which can be derived from a model of graphene in which electrons interact via a screened Coulomb potential. For our simulations we employ lattice gauge theory methods used in elementary particle physics. We show that the theory undergoes a second order phase transition and we provide estimates for the critical exponents. The estimated value of the physical critical coupling implies that graphene in vacuum is an insulator. We also present the first results for the quasiparticle dispersion relation.
We give an update of the situation concerning the effect of electron-electron interactions on the physics of a neutral graphene system at low energies. We revise old renormalization group results and the use of 1/N expansion to address questions of the possible opening of a low-energy gap, and the magnitude of the graphene fine structure constant. We emphasize the role of Fermi velocity as the only free parameter determining the transport and electronic properties of the graphene system and revise its renormalization by Coulomb interactions in the light of recent experimental evidence.
We address the computation of physical observables in graphene in the presence of Coulomb interactions of density-density type modeled with a static Coulomb potential within a quantum field theory perturbative renormalization scheme. We show that all the divergences encountered in the physical quantities are associated to the one loop electron self-energy and can be determined without ambiguities by a proper renormalization of the Fermi velocity. The renormalization of the photon polarization to second order in perturbation theory - a quantity directly related to the optical conductivity - is …
We study the long-range Coulomb interaction effects on the double-Weyl fermion system which is possibly realized in the three dimensional semimetal HgCr$_2$Se$_4$ in the ferromagnetic phase. Within the one-loop renormalization group analysis, we find that there exists a stable fixed point at which the Coulomb interaction is screened anisotropically. At the stable fixed point, the renormalized Coulomb interaction induces logarithmic corrections to the physical quantities such as specific heat, compressibility, diamagnetic susceptibility, and the finite frequency (dynamic) conductivity that are …
Graphene nanodisk is a graphene derivative with a closed edge. The trigonal zigzag nanodisk with size $N$ has $N$-fold degenerated zero-energy states. We investigate electron-electron interaction effects in the zero-energy sector. We explicitely derive the direct and exchange interactions, which are found to have no SU($N$) symmetry. Then, regarding a nanodisk as a quantum dot with an internal degree of freedom, we analyze the nanodisk-lead system consisting of a nanodisk and two leads. Employing the standard Green function method, we reveal novel Coulomb blockade effects in the system. The oc…
We argue that the unscreened Coulomb interaction in graphene provides a positive, universal, and logarithmic correction to scaling of zero-temperature conductivity with frequency. The combined effect of the disorder due to wrinkling of the graphene sheet and the long range electron-electron interactions is a finite positive contribution to the dc conductivity. This contribution is disorder strength dependent and thus non-universal. The low-energy behavior of such a system is governed by the line of fixed points at which both the interaction and disorder are finite, and the density of states is…
We address the interaction of graphene with 3d transition metal adatoms and the formation of localized magnetic moments by means of first-principles calculations. By comparing calculations within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) to GGA+U we find that the electronic configuration and the adsorption geometries can be very sensitive to effects of local Coulomb interactions U in the transition metal d-orbitals. We find high-spin configurations being favorable for Cr and Mn adatoms independent of the functional. For Fe, Co and Ni different electronic configurations are realized dependin…
The low-energy behaviors of gapless double- and triple-Weyl fermions caused by the interplay of long-range Coulomb interaction and quenched disorder are studied by performing a renormalization group analysis. It is found that an arbitrarily weak disorder drives the double-Weyl semimetal to undergo a quantum phase transition into a compressible diffusive metal, independent of the disorder type and the Coulomb interaction strength. In contrast, the nature of the ground state of triple-Weyl fermion system relies sensitively on the specific disorder type in the noninteracting limit: The system is …
Recent experiments on Weyl semimetals reveal that charged impurities may play an important role. We use a screened Coulomb disorder to model the charged impurities, and study the magneto-transport in a two-node Weyl semimetal. It is found that when the external magnetic field is applied parallel to the electric field, the calculated longitudinal magnetoconductivity shows positive in the magnetic field, which is just the negative longitudinal magnetoresistivity (LMR) observed in experiments. When the two fields are perpendicular to each other, the transverse magnetoconductivities are measured. …
The quasi-2D electrons in graphene behave as massless fermions obeying a Dirac-Weyl equation in the low-energy regime near the two Fermi points. The stability of spin-polarized phases (SPP) in graphene is considered. The exchange energy is evaluated from the analytic pair-distribution functions, and the correlation energies are estimated via a closely similar four-component 2D electron fluid which has been investigated previously. SPPs appear for sufficiently high doping, when the exchange energy alone is considered. However, the inclusion of correlations is found to {\it suppress} the spin-ph…
Understanding Dirac-like Fermions has become an imperative in modern condensed matter sciences: all across its research frontier, from graphene to high T$_c$ superconductors to the topological insulators and beyond, various electronic systems exhibit properties which can be well described by the Dirac equation. Such physics is no longer the exclusive domain of quantum field theories and other esoteric mathematical musings; instead, real physics of real systems is governed by such equations, and important materials science and practical implications hinge on our understanding of Dirac particles…
Coulomb interaction is of central importance in localized energy levels (bound states) or electronic flat bands and could result in many exotic quantum phases, such as magnetic, superconducting, and topological phases in graphene systems1-14. In graphene monolayer, the relativistic massless Dirac fermion nature of the charge carriers enables us to realize unprecedented quasibound states, which are trapped temporarily via whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) with the lifetime (trapping time) of ~ 10 fs, in circular graphene quantum dots (GQDs)15-20. Here we show that Coulomb interaction still plays …
We report a theoretical study of the many-body effects of electron-electron interaction on the ground-state and spectral properties of double-layer graphene. Using a projector-based renormalization method we show that if a finite voltage difference is applied between the graphene layers electron-hole pairs can be formed and---at very low temperatures---an excitonic instability might emerge in a double-layer graphene structure. The single-particle spectral function near the Fermi surface exhibits a prominent quasiparticle peak, different from neutral (undoped) graphene bilayers. Away from the F…
It has been recently predicted that the interplay between Coulomb interactions and Berry curvature can produce interesting optical phenomena in topologically nontrivial two-dimensional insulators. Here, we present a theory of the optical absorption for three-dimensional, hole-doped Weyl semimetals. We find that the Berry curvature, Coulomb interactions and the nonlinearity in the single-particle energy spectrum can together enable a light-induced valley polarization. We support and supplement our numerical results with an analytical toy model calculation, which unveils topologically nontrivial…
We show that Coulomb drag in ultra-clean graphene double layers can be used for controlling the on/off ratio for current flow by tunning the external gate voltage. Hence, although graphene remains semi-metallic, the double layer graphene system can be tuned from conductive to a highly resistive state. We show that our results explain previous data of Coulomb drag in double layer graphene samples in disordered SiO2 substrates.
We investigate the interplay of Coulomb interactions and correlated disorder in pseudospin-3/2 semimetals, which exhibit birefringent spectra in the absence of interactions. Coulomb interactions drive the system to a marginal Fermi liquid, both for the two-dimensional (2d) and three-dimensional (3d) cases. Short-ranged correlated disorder in 2d, or a power-law correlated disorder 3d, has the same engineering dimension as the Coulomb term, in a renormalization group (RG) sense. In order to analyze the combined effects of these two kinds of interactions, we apply a dimensional regularization sch…
We investigate the superconductivity of 3D Luttinger semimetals, such as YPtBi, where Cooper pairs are constituted of spin-3/2 quasiparticles. Various pairing mechanisms have already been considered for these semimetals, such as from polar phonons modes, and in this work we explore pairing from the screened electron-electron Coulomb repulsion. In these materials, the small Fermi energy and the spin-orbit coupling strongly influence how charge fluctuations can mediate pairing. We find the superconducting critical temperature as a function of doping for an s-wave order parameter, and determine i…
To understand how nonlocal Coulomb interactions affect the phase diagram of correlated electron materials, we report on a method to approximate a correlated lattice model with nonlocal interactions by an effective Hubbard model with on-site interactions U* only. The effective model is defined by the Peierls-Feynman-Bogoliubov variational principle. We find that the local part of the interaction U is reduced according to U*=U-V', where V' is a weighted average of nonlocal interactions. For graphene, silicene and benzene we show that the nonlocal Coulomb interaction can decrease the effective lo…
We implement a self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation based on a microscopic model in real space, which allows us to consider the interplay between the Hubbard and the extended Coulomb interaction in twisted bilayer graphene at the magic angle. These two interactions tend to favor different symmetry breaking patterns, having therefore complementary roles in the regimes where one or the other dominates. We show that, for sufficiently large values of the on-site Hubbard repulsion, magic angle graphene has an antiferromagnetic ground state at the charge neutrality point, while at half-filling…
We report on the status of ongoing Hybrid-Monte-Carlo simulations of the tight-binding model of mono-layer graphene. We present results concerning the semimetal-insulator phase transition, whereby two-body interactions are modeled by a partially screened Coulomb potential which takes into account screening by electrons in the lower $σ$-orbitals. We obtain evidence that finite-size effects may still be present in the current estimate of the critical coupling strength $α_C$, which was previously extracted from simulations on lattice-sizes up to $N_x=N_y=18$. We also present preliminary results c…
We employ diagrammatic Monte Carlo simulations to establish criteria for the stability of line-node semimetals in the presence of Coulomb interactions. Our results indicate a phase transition to a chiral insulating state that occurs at a finite interaction threshold which we determine. We also compute the Landau levels for out-of-plane and in-plane magnetic fields in the symmetric and symmetry-broken phases. We find that the magnetic field couples to the chiral order parameter, implying that this degree of freedom can be manipulated in situ in experiments. Finally, we check the existence of ed…
We study superconductivity driven by screened Coulomb repulsion in three-dimensional Luttinger semimetals with a quadratic band touching and strong spin-orbit coupling. In these semimetals, the Cooper pairs are formed by spin-3/2 fermions with non-trivial wavefunctions. We numerically solve the linear Eliashberg equation to obtain the critical temperature of a singlet s-wave gap function as a function of doping, with account of spin-orbit and self-energy corrections. In order to understand the underlying mechanism of superconductivity, we compute the sensitivity of the critical temperature to …
To obtain an effective many-body model of graphene and related materials from first principles we calculate the partially screened frequency dependent Coulomb interaction. In graphene, the effective on-site (Hubbard) interaction is U_00 = 9.3 eV in close vicinity to the critical value separating conducting graphene from an insulating phase emphasizing the importance of non-local Coulomb terms. The nearest-neighbor Coulomb interaction strength is computed to U_01 = 5.5 eV. In the long wavelength limit, we find the effective background dielectric constant of graphite to be ε= 2.5 in very good ag…
A 2+1 dimensional fermion field theory is proposed as a model for the low-energy electronic excitations in monolayer graphene. The model consists of N=2 four-component Dirac fermions moving in the plane and interacting via a contact interaction between charge densities. For strong couplings there is a continuous transition to a Mott insulting phase. We present results of an extensive numerical study of the model's critical region, including the order parameter, its associated susceptibility, and for the first time the quasiparticle propagator. The data enables an extraction of the critical exp…
We report on the results of the first-principle numerical study of spontaneous breaking of chiral (sublattice) symmetry in suspended monolayer graphene due to electrostatic interaction, which takes into account the screening of Coulomb potential by electrons on $σ$-orbitals. In contrast to the results of previous numerical simulations with unscreened potential, we find that suspended graphene is in the conducting phase with unbroken chiral symmetry. This finding is in agreement with recent experimental results by the Manchester group \cite{Elias et al, 2011}. Further, by artificially increasin…
Distinguishing Mott and strain-induced anisotropic semimetals in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene using Landau level spectroscopy
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory（国家强磁场实验室）；Florida State University（佛罗里达州立大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）；Weizmann Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所）；University of California Santa Barbara（加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校）；Donostia International Physics Center（圣塞巴斯蒂安国际物理中心）；IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science（伊克尔巴斯基克，巴斯克科学基金会）；University of Minnesota（明尼苏达大学）
In nodal-line semimetals, Coulomb interactions and short-range correlated disorder are both marginal perturbations to the clean non-interacting Hamiltonian. We analyze their interplay using a weak-coupling renormalization group approach. In the clean case, the Coulomb interaction has been found to be marginally irrelevant, leading to Fermi liquid behavior. We extend the analysis to incorporate the effects of disorder. The nodal line structure gives rise to kinematical constraints similar to that for a two-dimensional Fermi surface, which plays a crucial role in the one-loop renor- malization o…
We study the inter-valley scattering induced by the Coulomb repulsion as a purely electronic mechanism for the origin of superconductivity in few layers of graphene. The pairing is strongly favored by the presence of van Hove singularities (VHS's) in the density of states (DOS). We consider three different hetherostructures: twisted bilayer graphene (TBG), rhombohedral trilayer graphene (RTG) and Bernal bilayer graphene (BBG). We obtain trends and estimates of the superconducting (SC) critical temperature in agreement with the experimental findings, which might identify the inter-valley Coulom…
Using a combination of analytical arguments and state-of-the-art diagrammatic Monte Carlo simulations we show that the corrections to the dispersion in interacting Weyl semimetals are determined by the ultraviolet cutoff and the inverse screening length. If both of these are finite, then the diagrammatic series is convergent even in the low-temperature limit, which implies that the semimetallic phase remains stable. Meanwhile, the absence of a UV cutoff or screening results in logarithmic divergences at zero temperature. These results highlight the crucial impact of Coulomb interactions and sc…
The gap generation is studied in suspended clean graphene in the continuum model for quasiparticles with the Coulomb interaction. We solve the gap equation with the dynamical polarization function and show that, comparing to the case of the static polarization function, the critical coupling constant lowers to the value α_c=0.92, which is close to that obtained in lattice Monte Carlo simulations. It is argued that additional short-range four-fermion interactions should be included in the continuum model to account for the lattice simulation results. We obtain the critical line in the plane of …
We study the stability of Dirac semimetals with $N$ nodes in three spatial dimensions against strong $1/r$ Coulomb interactions. We particularly study the cases of $N=4$ and $N=16$, where the $N=4$ Dirac semimetal is described by the staggered fermions and the $N=16$ Dirac semimetal is described by the doubled lattice fermions. We take into account the $1/r$ long-range Coulomb interactions between the bulk electrons. Based on the U(1) lattice gauge theory, we analyze the system from the strong coupling limit. It is shown that the Dirac semimetals survive in the strong coupling limit when the o…
The ability to control the strength of interaction is essential for studying quantum phenomena emerging from a system of correlated fermions. For example, the isotope effect illustrates the effect of electron-phonon coupling on superconductivity, providing an important experimental support for the BCS theory. In this work, we report a new device geometry where the magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) is placed in close proximity to a Bernal bilayer graphene (BLG) separated by a 3 nm thick barrier. Using charge screening from the Bernal bilayer, the strength of electron-electron Coulomb …
The nodal and effectively relativistic dispersion featuring in a range of novel materials including two- dimensional graphene and three-dimensional Dirac and Weyl semimetals has attracted enormous interest during the past decade. Here, by studying the structure and symmetry of the diagrammatic expansion, we show that these nodal touching points are in fact perturbatively stable to all orders with respect to generic two-body interactions. For effective low-energy theories relevant for single and multilayer graphene, type-I and type-II Weyl and Dirac semimetals as well as Weyl points with higher…
We find exact analytic expressions for the energies and wavefunctions of the charged and neutral excitations above the exact ground states (at rational filling per unit cell) of projected Coulomb Hamiltonians in twisted bilayer graphene. Our exact expressions are valid for any form of the Coulomb interaction and any form of $AA$ and $AB/BA$ tunneling. The single charge excitation energy is a convolution of the Coulomb potential with a quantum geometric tensor of the TBG bands. The neutral excitations are (high-symmetry group) magnons, and their dispersion is analytically calculated in terms of…
We study the inelastic scattering rate due to the Coulomb interaction in three-dimensional Dirac/Weyl semimetals at finite temperature. We show that the perturbation theory diverges because of the long-range nature of the interaction, hence, thermally induced screening must be taken into account. We demonstrate that the scattering rate has a non-monotonic energy dependence with a sharp peak owing to the resonant decay into thermal plasmons. We also consider the Hubbard interaction for comparison. We show that, in contrast to the Coulomb case, it can be well described by the second-order pertur…
Topological semimetals with nodal line are a novel class of topological matter extending the concept of topological matter beyond topological insulators and Weyl/Dirac semimetals. Here, we show that a Floquet topological semimetal with nodal helix can be generated by irradiating graphene or the surface of a topological insulator with circularly polarized light. Nodal helix is a form of nodal line running across the Brillouin zone with helical winding. Specifically, it is shown that the dynamics of irradiated graphene is described by the time Stark Hamiltonian, which can host a Floquet topologi…
We study effects of a repulsive Coulomb interaction on the spectral gap in monolayer and bilayer graphene in the vicinity of the charge neutrality point by employing the functional renormalization-group technique. In both cases Coulomb interaction supports the gap once it is open. For monolayer graphene we correctly reproduce results obtained previously by several authors, e.g., an apparent logarithmic divergence of the Fermi velocity and the gap as well as a fixed point corresponding to a quantum phase transition at infinitely large Coulomb interaction. On the other hand, we show that the gap…
A range of quantum field theoretical phenomena driven by external magnetic fields and their applications in relativistic systems and quasirelativistic condensed matter ones, such as graphene and Dirac/Weyl semimetals, are reviewed. We start by introducing the underlying physics of the magnetic catalysis. The dimensional reduction of the low-energy dynamics of relativistic fermions in an external magnetic field is explained and its role in catalyzing spontaneous symmetry breaking is emphasized. The general theoretical consideration is supplemented by the analysis of the magnetic catalysis in qu…
We compute the Coulomb correction $\mathcal{C}$ to the a. c. conductivity of interacting massless Dirac particles in graphene in the collisionless limit using the polarization tensor approach in a regularization independent framework. Arbitrary parameters stemming from differences between logarithmically divergent integrals are fixed on physical grounds exploiting only spatial $O(2)$ rotational invariance of the model which amounts to transversality of the polarization tensor. Consequently $\mathcal{C}$ is unequivocally determined to be $(19- 6π)/12$ within this effective model. We compare our…
There is an interesting proposal that the long-range Coulomb interaction in suspended graphene can generate a dynamical gap, which leads to a semimetal-insulator phase transition. We revisit this problem by solving the self-consistent Dyson-Schwinger equations of wave function renormalization and fermion gap. In order to satisfy the Ward identity, a suitable vertex function is introduced. The impacts of singular velocity renormalization and dynamical screening on gap generation are both included in this formalism, and prove to be very important. We obtain a critical interaction strength, $3.2 …
