Gate tunable charged-phonon effect in bilayer graphene

TL;DR

This paper reports on the gate-tunable charged-phonon effect in bilayer graphene, showing a giant infrared intensity increase and phonon softening due to electron-phonon coupling modulated by doping.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first observation of a gate-tunable charged-phonon effect in bilayer graphene, linking phonon behavior to electronic transitions and doping levels.

Findings

Giant increase in infrared phonon intensity with doping

Softening of the Eu phonon mode (~0.2 eV)

Fano-like asymmetry indicating interaction with electronic continuum

Abstract

We observe a giant increase of the infrared intensity and a softening of the in-plane antisymmetric phonon mode Eu (~0.2 eV) in bilayer graphene as a function of the gate-induced doping. The phonon peak has a pronounced Fano-like asymmetry. We suggest that the intensity growth and the softening originate from the coupling of the phonon mode to the narrow electronic transition between parallel bands of the same character, while the asymmetry is due to the interaction with the continuum of transitions between the lowest hole and electron bands. The growth of the peak is a manifestation of the "charged-phonon" effect observed previously in organic chain conductors and doped fullerenes, which can now be tuned with the gate voltage.