Anomalous thermodynamics of Coulomb interacting massless Dirac fermions in two spatial dimensions

TL;DR

This paper predicts a logarithmic suppression of the specific heat in 2D massless Dirac fermions with Coulomb interactions, with potential experimental verification in graphene, and provides an analytical calculation of this effect.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical calculation of the suppressed specific heat due to Coulomb interactions in 2D Dirac fermions, including finite temperature screening effects.

Findings

Logarithmic suppression of specific heat in interacting Dirac fermions.

Analytical expression for the suppression coefficient.

Dependence of the effect on the dielectric constant.

Abstract

It is argued that the specific heat of $N$ massless Dirac fermions in 2 spatial dimensions interacting with 1/r Coulomb interactions is suppressed logarithmically relative to its non-interacting counterpart. The (dimensionless) coefficient of the logarithm is calculated analytically in the leading order in large $N$ expansion, but to all orders in $e^2N$, a procedure which takes into account finite temperature screening. Experimental observation of this effect is expected to occur in a single layer graphene embedded in a dielectric medium. Its dependence on the dielectric constant is calculated analytically.