The effect of anisotropy on phase transitions in graphene

TL;DR

This paper investigates how anisotropy (strain) influences phase transitions in graphene by analyzing dynamical gap generation using a non-perturbative approach, revealing that critical coupling slightly increases with anisotropy.

Contribution

It introduces a non-perturbative Schwinger-Dyson method to study anisotropic effects on phase transitions in graphene, providing new insights into the critical coupling behavior.

Findings

Critical coupling depends weakly on anisotropy

Critical coupling increases with greater anisotropy

Anisotropy influences phase transition thresholds

Abstract

We study the effect of anisotropy (strain) on dynamical gap generation in graphene. We work with a low energy effective theory obtained from a tight-binding Hamiltonian expanded around the Dirac points in momentum space. We use a non-perturbative Schwinger-Dyson approach and calculate a coupled set of five momentum dependent dressing functions. Our results show that the critical coupling depends only weakly on the anisotropy parameter, and increases with greater anisotropy.