Normal and Dirac fermions in graphene multilayers: Tight-binding description of the electronic structure

Abstract

Within a tight-binding approach we show that around the K point of the energy spectrum Dirac fermions are present in AB stacked graphene multilayers if they have mirror plane symmetry. In other words, Dirac fermions are present in graphene stacks with an odd number of layers. For an even number of stacked graphene layers, only normal fermions with a parabolic energy dispersion are found near the K point. © 2007 The American Physical Society.