Graphene zigzag ribbons, square lattice models and quantum spin chains

TL;DR

This paper provides an exact analytical study of zigzag graphene ribbons, revealing their width-dependent electronic properties, and establishes a novel mapping to coupled quantum chains and spin models, enhancing understanding of their quantum behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a new coupled-chain description of zigzag graphene ribbons and links their properties to quantum spin chain models, offering a unified theoretical framework.

Findings

Metallic ribbons for odd N, semiconducting for even N

Exact solutions clarify width-dependent conductance

Connection established between graphene ribbons and quantum spin chains

Abstract

We present an extended study of finite-width zigzag graphene ribbons (ZGRs) based on a tight-binding model with hard-wall boundary conditions. We provide an exact analytic solution that clarifies the origin of the predicted width dependence on the conductance through junctions of ribbons with different widths. An analysis of the obtained solutions suggests a new description of ZGRs in terms of coupled chains. We pursue these ideas further by introducing a mapping between the ZGR model and the Hamiltonian for N-coupled quantum chains as described in terms of 2N Majorana fermions. The proposed mapping preserves the dependence of ribbon properties on its width thus rendering metallic ribbons for N odd and zero-gap semiconductor ribbons for N even. Furthermore, it reveals a close connection between the low-energy properties of the ZGR model and a continuous family of square lattice model Hamiltonians with similar width-dependent properties that includes the $\pi-$flux and the trivial square lattice models. As a further extension, we show that this new description makes it possible to identify various aspects of the physics of graphene ribbons with those predicted by models of quantum spin chains (QSCs).