Electronic structure and optical signatures of highly-doped graphene

Abstract: Heavily doping graphene by intercalation can raise its Fermi level near an extended van Hove singularity, potentially inducing correlated electronic phases. Intercalation also modifies the band structure: dopants may hybridize with carbon orbitals and order into $\sqrt{3}\times\sqrt{3}$ or $2\times2$ superstructures, introducing periodic potentials that fold the graphene $\pi$ bands. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy further shows a pronounced flattening of the conduction band near the M points, producing higher-order van Hove singularities. These effects depend strongly on the dopant species and substrate, with implications for both many-body physics and transport. We construct effective tight-binding models that incorporate dopant ordering, carbon-dopant hybridization, and $\pi$-band renormalization. Model parameters are obtained from density functional theory and reproduce dispersions observed in photoemission experiments. Using these models, we compute the optical conductivity and identify characteristic signatures associated with dopant ordering and hybridization. Our results provide a framework to interpret experimental spectra and to probe the superlattice symmetry of highly doped monolayer graphene.