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Pritam Pal

Publications and source records attributed to Pritam Pal.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Electron viscosity and device-dependent variability in four-probe electrical transport in ultra-clean graphene field-effect transistors

Hydrodynamic electrons in high-mobility graphene devices have demonstrated great potential in establishing an electronic analogue of relativistic quantum fluid in solid-state systems. One of the key requirements for observing viscous electron flow in an electronic channel is a large momentum-relaxation path, a process primarily limited by electron-impurity/phonon scattering in graphene. Over the past decade, multiple complex device geometries have been successfully employed to suppress momentum-relaxing scattering mechanisms; however, experimental observations have been found to be sensitive to the device fabrication process and architecture, raising questions about the signature of electron hydrodynamics itself. Here, we present a study on multiple ultra-clean graphene field-effect transistors (FETs) in a simple, rectangular four-terminal device architecture. Using electrical transport measurements, we have characterised the pristine quality of the graphene FETs and examined the variation of electrical resistance in the doped regime as a function of carrier density and temperature. Our results reveal strong device-dependent variability even in the most simple architecture that we attribute to competing momentum-conserving and momentum-relaxing scattering mechanisms, as well as coupling to contacts. Further, we have proposed a phenomenological method for analysing the results, which yields transport parameters in accordance with recent experiments. This simple experimental strategy and analysis can serve as an efficient tool for extracting the viscous electronic contribution in state-of-the-art high-mobility graphene FETs.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Universality in quantum critical flow of charge and heat in ultra-clean graphene

Close to the Dirac point, graphene is expected to exist in quantum critical Dirac fluid state, where the flow of both charge and heat can be described with a dc electrical conductivity $\sigma_\mathrm{Q}$, and thermodynamic variables such as the entropy and enthalpy densities. Although the fluid-like viscous flow of charge is frequently reported in state-of-the-art graphene devices, the value of $\sigma_\mathrm{Q}$, predicted to be quantized and determined only by the universality class of the critical point, has not been established experimentally so far. Here we have discerned the quantum critical universality in graphene transport by combining the electrical ($\sigma$) and thermal ($\kappa_\mathrm{e}$) conductivities in very high-quality devices close to the Dirac point. We find that $\sigma$ and $\kappa_\mathrm{e}$ are inversely related, as expected from relativistic hydrodynamics, and $\sigma_\mathrm{Q}$ converges to $\approx (4\pm 1)\times e^2/h$ for multiple devices, where $e$ and $h$ are the electronic charge and the Planck's constant, respectively. We also observe, (1) a giant violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law where the effective Lorentz number exceeds the semiclassical value by more than 200 times close to the Dirac point at low temperatures, and (2) the effective dynamic viscosity ($\eta_\mathrm{th}$) in the thermal regime approaches the holographic limit $\eta_\mathrm{th}/s_\mathrm{th} \rightarrow \hbar/4\pi k_\mathrm{B}$ within a factor of four in the cleanest devices close to the room temperature, where $s_\mathrm{th}$ and $k_\mathrm{B}$ are the thermal entropy density and the Boltzmann constant, respectively. Our experiment addresses the missing piece in the potential of high-quality graphene as a testing bed for some of the unifying concepts in physics.

cond-mat.mes-hall