Department of Physics
Condensed Matter Seminar

Recently a new single-layer material—graphene—has been discovered. This is a material where Dirac points in the fermionic spectrum lead to very unusual properties, including transport and impurity states. I will argue that these properties are not unique to graphene and in fact are a direct consequence of the Dirac spectrum in the fermionic excitation sector. Strong similarities with d-wave superconductors, superfluid 3He, p-wave superconductors and other materials with similar energy spectra hint at a unifying perspective. I will argue that this discovery signifies the emergence of a new class of Dirac materials, in which nontirivial properties emerge as a direct consequence of Dirac spectrum of excitations. I will discuss some observable effects, such as Kondo effect and inelastic tunneling spectroscopy, that differentiate Dirac Materials from other classes.