Generic suppression of conductance quantization of interacting electrons in graphene nanoribbons in a perpendicular magnetic field

Abstract

The effects of electron interaction on the magnetoconductance of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are studied within the Hartree approximation. We find that a perpendicular magnetic field leads to a suppression instead of an expected improvement of the quantization. This suppression is traced back to interaction-induced modifications of the band structure leading to the formation of compressible strips in the middle of GNRs. It is also shown that the hard-wall confinement combined with electron interaction generates overlaps between forward and backward propagating states, which may significantly enhance backscattering in realistic GNRs. The relation to available experiments is discussed. © 2010 The American Physical Society.