Microscopic view on Landau level broadening mechanisms in graphene

Abstract

Placing a two-dimensional sheet of graphene in an external magnetic field the continuous electronic band structure is discretized due to Landau quantization. The resulting optical transitions are subject to a broadening, which can lead to a significant overlap of Landau levels. We investigate the possible microscopic processes that could cause a broadening of the corresponding peaks in the absorption spectrum of Landau-quantized graphene: (i) radiative decay, (ii) Coulomb interaction, (iii) optical phonons, (iv) acoustic phonons, and (v) impurities. Since recent experiments have shown that independent of the magnetic field the resolvable number of Landau levels is constant, we put a special focus on the dependence of the broadening on the external magnetic field B and the Landau level index n. Our calculations reveal the impurities to be the crucial broadening mechanism, where different regimes of well separated and densely spaced Landau levels need to be taken into account. Furthermore, carrier-carrier and carrier-phonon scattering give rise to a very specific dependence on the Landau level index n that has not been observed yet.