Zero mode and vacuum charge : QED in graphene


  Omrie Ovdat  ,  Eric Akkermans  
Technion
Technion

 

We present a model for the motion of low energy excitations in graphene in the presence of a single vacancy. Our model is based on Dirac massless fermions. We show that creating a vacancy in the lattice implies the appearance of a zero mode, parity symmetry breaking and unit vacuum charge all occurring at once. We discuss the relation with 2+1 dimensional QED 'parity anomaly' as well as present experimental evidence supporting these results.