English

Ferromagnetism and Wigner crystallization in Kagome graphene and related structures

Materials Science 2018-08-01 v3 Strongly Correlated Electrons Computational Physics

Abstract

Interaction in a flat band is magnified due to the divergence in the density of states, which gives rise to a variety of many-body phenomena such as ferromagnetism and Wigner crystallization. Until now, however, most studies of the flat band physics are based on model systems, making their experimental realization a distant future. Here, we propose a class of systems made of real atoms, namely, carbon atoms with realistic physical interactions (dubbed here as Kagome graphene/graphyne). Density functional theory calculations reveal that these Kagome lattices offer a controllable way to realize robust flat bands sufficiently close to the Fermi level. Upon hole doping, they split into spin-polarized bands at different energies to result in a flat-band ferromagnetism. At a half filling, this splitting reaches its highest level of 768 meV. At smaller fillings, e.g., when {\nu}=1/6, on the other hand, a Wigner crystal spontaneously forms, where the electrons form closed loops localized on the grid points of a regular triangular lattice. It breaks the translational symmetry of the original Kagome lattice. We further show that the Kagome lattices exhibit good mechanical stabilities, based on which a possible route for experimental realization of the Kagome graphene is also proposed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1801.07550,
  title  = {Ferromagnetism and Wigner crystallization in Kagome graphene and related structures},
  author = {Yuanping Chen and Shenglong Xu and Yuee Xie and Chengyong Zhong and Congjun Wu and S. B. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.07550},
  year   = {2018}
}