Speaker
christopher Winterowd
(University of Utah)
Description
One of the most important developments in condensed matter physics in recent years has been the discovery
and characterization of graphene. A two-dimensional layer of Carbon arranged in a hexagonal lattice, graphene exhibits
many interesting electronic properties, most notably the property that the low energy excitations can be described by the Dirac equation for a massless fermion.
These excitations interact strongly via the Coulomb interaction and thus non-perturbative methods can be useful. Using
methods borrowed from lattice QCD, we study the graphene effective theory in the presence of an external magnetic field.
Graphene, along with other $(2+1)$-dimensional field theories, has been predicted to undergo spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry including the formation of a gap as a result of
the external magnetic field. This phenomenon is known as magnetic catalysis. Our study investigates magnetic catalysis using a fully non-perturbative approach.
| Oral or Poster Presentation | Oral |
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Primary authors
Prof.
Carleton DeTar
(University of Utah)
christopher Winterowd
(University of Utah)
