Graphene with geometrically induced vorticity

Jiannis K. Pachos, Michael Stone, Kristan Temme

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

At half filling, the electronic structure of graphene can be modeled by a pair of free two-dimensional Dirac fermions. We explicitly demonstrate that in the presence of a geometrically induced gauge field an everywhere-real Kekulé modulation of the hopping matrix elements can correspond to a nonreal Higgs field with nontrivial vorticity. This provides a natural setting for fractionally charged vortices with localized zero modes. For fullerenelike molecules we employ the index theorem to demonstrate the existence of six low-lying states that do not depend strongly on the Kekulé-induced mass gap.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number156806
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume100
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 18 2008

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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