Luttinger liquid at the edge of undoped graphene in a strong magnetic field

We demonstrate that an undoped two-dimensional carbon plane (graphene) whose bulk is in the integer quantum Hall regime supports a nonchiral Luttinger liquid at an armchair edge. This behavior arises due to the unusual dispersion of the noninteracting edge states, causing a crossing of bands with di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2006-09, Vol.97 (11), p.116805-116805, Article 116805
Main Authors: Fertig, H A, Brey, L
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:We demonstrate that an undoped two-dimensional carbon plane (graphene) whose bulk is in the integer quantum Hall regime supports a nonchiral Luttinger liquid at an armchair edge. This behavior arises due to the unusual dispersion of the noninteracting edge states, causing a crossing of bands with different valley and spin indices at the edge. We demonstrate that this stabilizes a domain wall structure with a spontaneously ordered phase degree of freedom. This coherent domain wall supports gapless charged excitations, and has a power law tunneling I-V with a nonintegral exponent. In proximity to a bulk lead, the edge may undergo a quantum phase transition between the Luttinger liquid phase and a metallic state.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.97.116805