Eva Y. Andrei
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA
Date
13 October 2010
Host
Gianni Blatter
Title
Graphene: Relativistic Electrons in Carbon Flatland
Abstract
The discovery of graphene, a one-atom thick membrane of crystalline Carbon, has opened an extraordinary arena for new physics and applications stemming from charge carriers that are governed by quantum-relativistic dynamics. I will review the physical properties of this material and present experimental results obtained with scanning tunneling microscopy and magneto-transport which provided access to the unusual charge carriers in graphene. The findings include: direct observation of the Landau level energy spectrum which governs the dynamics of the relativistic charge carriers in a magnetic field and observation of the fractional quantum Hall effect. The latter is a manifestation of magnetically-induced strong correlations which cause the 2-dimensional electron gas to condense into an incompressible state of interacting composite fermions.