Bilayer graphene spectral function in RPA and self-consistent GW

TL;DR

This study compares the spectral function of doped bilayer graphene calculated using RPA and self-consistent GW, revealing how electron interactions influence quasiparticle features and plasmarons.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of bilayer graphene's spectral function using both RPA and GW, highlighting the differences in plasmaron coherence and quasiparticle properties.

Findings

RPA shows coherent plasmarons, while GW broadens these features.

Bilayer graphene exhibits weak electron interactions with small renormalizations.

Plasmon modes become less coherent in GW, aligning with spectral function changes.

Abstract

We calculate the single-particle spectral function for doped bilayer graphene in the low energy limit, described by two parabolic bands with zero band gap and long range Coulomb interaction. Calculations are done using thermal Green's functions in both the random phase approximation (RPA) and the fully self-consistent GW approximation. RPA (in line with previous studies) yields a spectral function which apart from the Landau quasiparticle peaks shows additional coherent features interpreted as plasmarons, i.e. composite electron-plasmon excitations. In GW the plasmaron becomes incoherent and peaks are replaced by much broader features. The deviation of the quasiparticle weight and mass renormalization from their non-interacting values is small which indicates that bilayer graphene is a weakly interacting system. The electron energy loss function, $Im[-\epsilon^{-1}_q(\omega)]$ shows a sharp plasmon mode in RPA which in GW approximation becomes less coherent and thus consistent with the weaker plasmaron features in the corresponding single-particle spectral function.