Dynamical Mean Field Study of The Dirac Liquid

TL;DR

This paper uses dynamical mean field theory to explore how interactions affect Dirac fermions in graphene, revealing a fixed point called Dirac liquid and analyzing the transition to a Mott insulator.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Dirac liquid as a fixed point for interacting 2+1D Dirac fermions using DMFT, and studies the semi-metal to insulator transition.

Findings

Identification of Dirac liquid as an effective free Dirac theory

Discovery of a Mott insulating fixed point at strong interactions

Analysis of the semi-metal to insulator transition

Abstract

Renormalization is one of the basic notions of condensed matter physics. Based on the concept of renormalization, the Landau's {\em Fermi liquid} theory has been able to explain, why despite the presence of Coulomb interactions, the free electron theory works so well for simple metals with extended Fermi surface (FS). The recent synthesis of graphene has provided the condensed matter physicists with a low energy laboratory of Dirac fermions where instead of a FS, one has two Fermi points. Many exciting phenomena in graphene can be successfully interpreted in terms of free Dirac electrons. In this paper, employing dynamical mean field theory (DMFT), we show that an interacting Dirac sea is essentially an effective free Dirac theory. This observation suggests the notion of {\em Dirac liquid} as a fixed point of interacting 2+1 dimensional Dirac fermions. We find one more fixed point at strong interactions describing a Mott insulating state, and address the nature of semi-metal to insulator (SMIT) transition in this system.