Magnetic Catalysis in Graphene

Abstract: One of the most important developments in condensed matter physics in recent years has been the discovery and characterization of graphene. A two-dimensional layer of Carbon arranged in a hexagonal lattice, graphene exhibits many interesting electronic properties, most notably that the low energy excitations behave as massless Dirac fermions. These excitations interact strongly via the Coulomb interaction and thus non-perturbative methods are necessary. Using methods borrowed from lattice QCD, we study the graphene effective theory in the presence of an external magnetic field. Graphene, along with other $(2+1)$-dimensional field theories, has been predicted to undergo spontaneous breaking of flavor symmetry including the formation of a gap as a result of the external magnetic field. This phenomenon is known as magnetic catalysis. Our study investigates magnetic catalysis using a fully non-perturbative approach.