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arXiv · 1205.3206

Mapping Dirac Quasiparticles near a Single Coulomb Impurity on Graphene

Yang Wang·Victor W. Brar·Andrey V. Shytov·Qiong Wu·William Regan·Hsin-Zon Tsai·Alex Zettl·Leonid S. Levitov·Michael F. Crommie
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Abstract

The response of Dirac fermions to a Coulomb potential is predicted to differ significantly from the behavior of non-relativistic electrons seen in traditional atomic and impurity systems. Surprisingly, many key theoretical predictions for this ultra-relativistic regime have yet to be tested in a laboratory. Graphene, a 2D material in which electrons behave like massless Dirac fermions, provides a unique opportunity to experimentally test such predictions. The response of Dirac fermions to a Coulomb potential in graphene is central to a wide range of electronic phenomena and can serve as a sensitive probe of graphene's intrinsic dielectric constant, the primary factor determining the strength of electron-electron interactions in this material. Here we present a direct measurement of the nanoscale response of Dirac fermions to a single Coulomb potential placed on a gated graphene device. Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy were used to fabricate tunable charge impurities on graphene and to measure how they are screened by Dirac fermions for a Q = +1|e| impurity charge state. Electron-like and hole-like Dirac fermions were observed to respond very differently to tunable Coulomb potentials. Comparison of this electron-hole asymmetry to theoretical simulations has allowed us to test basic predictions for the behavior of Dirac fermions near a Coulomb potential and to extract the intrinsic dielectric constant of graphene: ε_g= 3.0 \pm 1.0. This small value of ε_g indicates that microscopic electron-electron interactions can contribute significantly to graphene properties.

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Yang Wang, Victor W. Brar, Andrey V. Shytov, Qiong Wu, William Regan, Hsin-Zon Tsai, Alex Zettl, Leonid S. Levitov, Michael F. Crommie. 2012-05-14. Mapping Dirac Quasiparticles near a Single Coulomb Impurity on Graphene. https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2379

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