SEMINAR on Disorder and Strong Correlations - Thursday, 12 May 2011 - 11:30 a.m.

[del_rio]

CONDENSED MATTER AND

STATISTICAL PHYSICS SECTION

SEMINAR  on  Disorder and Strong Correlations

Thursday, 12 May 2011    -    11:30 a.m.

Luigi Stasi Seminar Room

ICTP Leonardo Building - 1st floor

Lars FRITZ

(University of Cologne)

"Interaction effects in Dirac systems: driving chiral symmetry breaking?"

Abstract

We discuss interaction effects in Dirac materials. In a first part I will discuss the role of interaction in graphene and manifestations of interactions in transport measurements in weakly interacting systems. For strong interactions for a concrete phenomenological model we will also discuss the quantum critical conductivity of graphene at a semimetal-to-insulator transition (breaking the chiral symmetry) and make connection to experiments conducted on suspended graphene samples. In a second part we discuss topological insulators and specifically the Dirac character of surface states. We argue that upon driving a bulk quantum phase transition surface states can be tuned in a way which might facilitate the observation of chiral symmetry breaking on the surface.




_________________________________
Ms. Rosa del Rio
UNESCO-IAEA
The Abdus Salam International Centre
for Theoretical Physics
Strada Costiera 11- 34014 Trieste (Italy)
phone: +39-040-2240396
fax: +39-040-22407396