• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevB.86.081403
• Corpus ID: 118539988

Non-Abelian SU(2) gauge fields through density wave order and strain in graphene

@article{Gopalakrishnan2012NonAbelianSG,
  title={Non-Abelian SU(2) gauge fields through density wave order and strain in graphene},
  author={Sarang Gopalakrishnan and Pouyan Ghaemi and Shinsei Ryu},
  journal={Physical Review B},
  year={2012},
  volume={86},
  pages={081403}
}

• S. Gopalakrishnan, P. Ghaemi, S. Ryu
• Published 30 April 2012
• Physics
• Physical Review B

Spatially varying strain patterns can qualitatively alter the electronic properties of graphene, acting as effective valley-dependent magnetic fields and giving rise to pseudo-Landau-level (PLL) quantization. Here, we show that the strain-induced magnetic field is one component of a non-Abelian $SU(2)$ gauge field within the low-energy theory of graphene and identify the other two components as period-3 charge-density waves. We show that these density waves, if spatially varied, give rise to PLL quantization. We also argue that strain-induced magnetic fields can induce density-wave order in graphene, thus dynamically gapping out the lowest PLL; moreover, the ordering should generically be accompanied by dislocations. We discuss experimental signatures of these effects.