WFU Physics Colloquium

TITLE: Relativity and Condensed Matter Meet - a story about Dirac Fermions on a graphene sheet

SPEAKER: Dr. Tamar Pereg-Barnea ,

TIME: Tuesday Jan. 29, 2008 at 4:00 PM

PLACE: Room 101 in Olin Physical Laboratory

Graphene, an isolated sheet of carbon atoms has recently transformed from a theorist dream to a lab fabricated and studied material. In this talk I will survey some of its surprising properties which are closely related to two special points in the Brillouin zone where the energy bands cross. These 'valley' points occur at zero energy and finite momentum and govern the low energy physics of the system. At the valleys Fermions obey the relativistic Dirac equation, rather than a non-relativistic Schrodinger's equation, and that's where the fun begins! I will discuss how lessons learned from Feynman's quantum electro dynamics (QED) are relevant for this new condensed matter system. In particular, the role of interactions and impurities will be discussed.