题目:  Mass Generation for Dirac Electrons in Graphene

主讲人: Markus Kindermann, School of Physics, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA

时间: 2012年7月13日(星期五) 上午10点        地点: 物理馆3楼报告厅


Abstract
Graphene, a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon, has drawn much
attention since its first experimental isolation. Much of this
fascination stems from its exotic low-energy dynamics that is governed
by the “Dirac equation,” a quantum mechanical law of motion that was
originally discovered for relativistic particles such as neutrinos.
Unlike for real neutrinos, however, the Dirac equation for electrons
in graphene is generically massless. In this talk I will discuss how a
mass term can be induced in the material and what the consequences of
such mass are. Unlike the situation for real, relativistic particles,
the mass for the charge carriers in graphene can be space-dependent. I
will discuss the manifestations of this exotic property for the
electrical characteristics of the material.

Biography
In 2003 Markus Kindermann received a PhD in Physics from the
University of Leiden. For three years he then did postdoctoral
research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Cornell
University before joining in 2006 the School of Physics of the Georgia
Institute of Technology. There he is an associate professor and he
does research in the area of condensed matter theory with a focus on
the physics of electronic nanostructures and quantum information
science.