Experimental evidence of plasmarons and effective fine structure constant in electron-doped graphene/h-BN heterostructure

TL;DR

This study provides the first experimental evidence of plasmarons in electron-doped graphene/h-BN heterostructures, revealing strong electron-electron interactions and effective fine structure constants through ARPES measurements, with implications for nano-electronics.

Contribution

First experimental observation of plasmarons in graphene/h-BN heterostructures, demonstrating strong electron-electron interactions and measuring the effective fine structure constant.

Findings

Observation of diamond-shaped plasmaron dispersion near Dirac cone

Extraction of electron-electron interaction strength α_{ee}^* ≈ 0.9

Confirmation of graphene/h-BN as a platform for strong electron-electron interaction studies

Abstract

Electron-electron interaction is fundamental in condensed matter physics and can lead to composite quasiparticles called plasmarons, which strongly renormalize the dispersion and carry information of electron-electron coupling strength as defined by the effective fine structure constant $\alpha_{ee}^*$. Although h-BN with unique dielectric properties has been widely used as an important substrate for graphene, so far there is no experimental report of plasmarons in graphene/h-BN yet. Here, we report direct experimental observation of plasmaron dispersion in graphene/h-BN heterostructures through angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements upon {\it in situ} electron doping. Characteristic diamond-shaped dispersion is observed near the Dirac cone in both 0$^\circ$ (aligned) and 13.5$^\circ$ (twisted) graphene/h-BN, and the electron-electron interaction strength $\alpha_{ee}^*$ is extracted to be $\alpha_{ee}^*\approx0.9\pm 0.1$, highlighting the important role of electron-electron interaction. Our results suggest graphene/h-BN as an ideal platform for investigating strong electron-electron interaction with weak dielectric screening, and lays fundamental physics for gate-tunable nano-electronics and nano-plasmonics.