Effects of the two-dimensional Coulomb interaction in both Fermi velocity and energy gap for Dirac-like electrons at finite temperature

Abstract

We describe both the Fermi velocity and the mass renormalization due to the two-dimensional Coulomb interaction in the presence of a thermal bath. To achieve this, we consider an anisotropic version of pseudo quantum electrodynamics (PQED), within a perturbative approach in the fine-structure constant $\alpha$. Thereafter, we use the so-called imaginary-time formalism for including the thermal bath. In the limit $T\rightarrow 0$, we calculate the renormalized mass $m^R(p)$ and compare this result with the experimental findings for the energy band gap in monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides, namely, WSe$_2$ and MoS$_2$. In these materials, the quasi-particle excitations behave as a massive Dirac-like particles in the low-energy limit, hence, its mass is related to the energy band gap of the material. In the low-temperature limit $T\ll v_F p $, where $v_F p$ is taken as the Fermi energy, we show that $m^R(p)$ decreases linearly on the temperature, i.e, $m^R(p,T)-m^R(p,T\rightarrow 0)\approx -A_\alpha T +O(T^3)$, where $A_\alpha$ is a positive constant. On the other hand, for the renormalized Fermi velocity, we find that $v^R_F(p,T)-v^R_F(p,T\rightarrow 0)\approx -B_\alpha T^3 +O(T^5)$, where $B_\alpha$ is a positive constant. We also perform numerical tests which confirm our analytical results.