Zeeman coupling and screening corrections to skyrmion excitations in graphene

Abstract

At half filling of the fourfold degenerate Landau levels |n| \geq 1 in graphene, the ground states are spin polarized quantum Hall states that support spin skyrmion excitations for |n| =1,2,3. Working in the Hartree-Fock approximation, we compute the excitation energy of an unbound spin skyrmion-antiskyrmion excitation as a function of the Zeeman coupling strength for these Landau levels. We find for both the bare and screened Coulomb interactions that the spin skyrmion-antiskyrmion excitation energy is lower than the excitation energy of an unbound spin 1/2 electron-hole pair in a finite range of Zeeman coupling in Landau levels |n| =1,2,3. This range decreases rapidly for increasing Landau level index and is extremely small for |n| =3. For valley skyrmions which should be present at 1/4 and 3/4 fillings of the Landau levels |n| =1,2,3, we show that screening corrections are more important in the latter case. It follows that an unbound valley skyrmion-antiskyrmion excitation has lower energy at 3/4 filling than at 1/4. We compare our results with recent experiments on spin and valley skyrmion excitations in graphene.