Quantum oscillations in graphene in the presence of disorder and interactions

Pallab Goswami, Xun Jia, Sudip Chakravarty

Published 2008-09-20, updated 2008-09-23Version 2

Quantum oscillations in graphene is discussed. The effect of interactions are addressed by Kohn's theorem regarding de Haas-van Alphen oscillations, which states that electron-electron interactions cannot affect the oscillation frequencies as long as disorder is neglected and the system is sufficiently screened, which should be valid for chemical potentials not very close to the Dirac point. We determine the positions of Landau levels in the presence of potential disorder from exact transfer matrix and finite size diagonalization calculations. The positions are shown to be unshifted even for moderate disorder; stronger disorder, can, however, lead to shifts, but this also appears minimal even for disorder width as large as one-half of the bare hopping matrix element on the graphene lattice. Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations of the conductivity are calculated analytically within a self-consistent Born approximation of impurity scattering. The oscillatory part of the conductivity follows the widely invoked Lifshitz-Kosevich form when certain mass and frequency parameters are properly interpreted.