Signature of curved QFT effects on the optical properties of deformed graphene

Abstract

The Dirac equation in curved space is used to study the optical transmittance of deformed graphene along a given direction. Our theoretical analysis of the available experimental data for the light transmittance suggests that the periodic ripple associated with the out-of-plane deformation observed in unstrained graphene explains the observations. Furthermore, the experimental uniaxial strained graphene for light transmittance shows two features, namely the modification of the cos 2 θ law and the decrease of the amplitude of the oscillations with the polarization angle θ, which can be well accommodated within the theoretical analysis used here and provide further evidence of the validity of using QFT in curved space to understand two-dimensional materials.

Tunable transmittance in anisotropic two-dimensional materials

“…For small uniaxial lattice deformations a variation of the transmittance with respect to the wave plane polarization has been reported in Refs. [18,19]. The observed deviation from the isotropic case was small, though, and did not exceed 1%.…”

“…Our calculations indicate that much larger transparency oscillations can occur than those reported in Refs. [18,19] due to strong deformations with degenerate Dirac nodes.…”

Aspects of the polynomial affine model of gravity in three dimensions

“…An interconnection between three-dimensional gravity with other branches of physics was encountered by Dereli and Verçin in the context of the continuum theory of lattice defects, through the identification of the dislocation and disclination line density tensors with torsion and curvature tensors, and the free-energy density with the Lagrangian of the Deser-Jackiw-Templeton model of gravity [36]. 2 More recently, methods of quantum field theory in curved spaces have been applied to the analysis of properties of graphene, viewed as a membrane endowed with an metric induced by its embedding into three-dimensional space [38][39][40][41][42][43].…”

Aspects of the polynomial affine model of gravity in three dimensions

“…An interconnection between three-dimensional gravity with other branches of physics was encountered by Dereli and Verçin in the context of the continuum theory of lattice defects, through the identification of the dislocation and disclination line density tensors with torsion and curvature tensors, and the free-energy density with the Lagrangian of the Deser-Jackiw-Templeton model of gravity [35]. 2 More recently, methods of quantum field theory in curved spaces have been applied to the analysis of properties of graphene, viewed as a membrane endowed with an metric induced by its embedding into three-dimensional space [37][38][39][40][41][42].…”