Using Weyl symmetry to make Graphene a real lab for fundamental physics

TL;DR

This paper explores how Weyl symmetry, a fundamental concept from gauge theories, can be applied to graphene to create a laboratory setting for testing fundamental physics principles.

Contribution

It reviews and extends recent theoretical and experimental proposals to use graphene as a platform for studying Weyl symmetry in a laboratory environment.

Findings

Weyl symmetry can influence electronic properties of graphene.

Proposals exist for experimental tests of Weyl symmetry in graphene.

Graphene can serve as a practical testbed for fundamental physics concepts.

Abstract

In the first attempt to introduce gauge theories in physics, Hermann Weyl, around the 1920s, proposed certain scale transformations to be a fundamental symmetry of nature. Despite the intense use of Weyl symmetry that has been made over the decades, in various theoretical settings, this idea never found its way to the laboratory. Recently, building-up from work by Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh and collaborators on the Weyl-gauge symmetry, applications of Weyl-symmetry to the electronic properties of graphene have been put forward, first, in a theoretical setting, and later, in an experimental proposal. Here I review those results, by enlarging and deepening the discussion of certain aspects, and by pointing to the steps necessary to make graphene a testing ground of fundamental ideas.