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Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 046403 (2008) [4 pages]

Coulomb Interaction, Ripples, and the Minimal Conductivity of Graphene

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Igor F. Herbut1, Vladimir Juričić1, and Oskar Vafek2
1Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6
2National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Department of Physics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA

Received 7 August 2007; published 28 January 2008

We argue that the unscreened Coulomb interaction in graphene provides a positive, universal, and logarithmic correction to scaling of zero-temperature conductivity with frequency. The combined effect of the disorder due to wrinkling of the graphene sheet and the long-range electron-electron interactions is a finite positive contribution to the dc conductivity. This contribution is disorder strength dependent and thus nonuniversal. The low-energy behavior of such a system is governed by the line of fixed points at which both the interaction and disorder are finite, and the density of states is exactly linear. An estimate of the typical random vector potential representing ripples in graphene brings the theoretical value of the minimal conductivity into the vicinity of 4e2/h.

© 2008 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.046403
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.046403
PACS:
71.10.Pm, 71.10.Hf, 71.23.−k, 73.61.Wp