Chiral symmetry of graphene and strong coupling lattice gauge theory

Abstract

We model the electrons on a monolayer graphene in terms of the compact and non-compact U(1) lattice gauge theories. The system is analyzed by the strong coupling expansion and is shown to be an insulator due to dynamical gap formation in/around the strong coupling limit. This is similar to the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in strong coupling gauge theories. The results from the compact and non-compact formulations are compared up to the next-to-leading order of the strong coupling expansion. Excitonic modes and their dispersion relations in the insulating phase are also investigated: it is found that there arises a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone mode obeying the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner type formula.