Experimental evidence of chiral symmetry breaking in Kekul\'e-ordered graphene
Changhua Bao, Hongyun Zhang, Teng Zhang, Xi Wu, Laipeng Luo, Shaohua, Zhou, Qian Li, Yanhui Hou, Wei Yao, Liwei Liu, Pu Yu, Jia Li, Wenhui Duan,, Hong Yao, Yeliang Wang, Shuyun Zhou
TL;DR
This paper provides experimental evidence of chiral symmetry breaking in Kekulé-ordered graphene, demonstrated through gap opening and modulation, revealing new physics opportunities in this material.
Contribution
It presents the first direct experimental evidence of chiral symmetry breaking in Kekulé-ordered graphene using microscopic and spectroscopic techniques.
Findings
Gap opening at the Dirac point observed.
Kekulé-O type modulation detected.
Chirality mixing near the gap edge observed.
Abstract
The low-energy excitations of graphene are relativistic massless Dirac fermions with opposite chiralities at valleys K and K'. Breaking the chiral symmetry could lead to gap opening in analogy to dynamical mass generation in particle physics. Here we report direct experimental evidences of chiral symmetry breaking (CSB) from both microscopic and spectroscopic measurements in a Li-intercalated graphene. The CSB is evidenced by gap opening at the Dirac point, Kekul\'e-O type modulation, and chirality mixing near the gap edge. Our work opens up opportunities for investigating CSB related physics in a Kekul\'e-ordered graphene.
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