The infrared conductivity of graphene on top of silicon oxide

¹  Centro de Física e Departamento de Física, Universidade do Minho - P-4710-057, Braga, Portugal, EU
²  Department of Physics, Boston University - 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA

Corresponding author: peres@fisica.uminho.pt

Received: 18 July 2008
Accepted: 18 September 2008

Abstract

We study the infrared conductivity of graphene at finite chemical potential and temperature taking into account the effect of phonons and disorder due to charged impurities and unitary scatterers, that is, considering all possible single-particle scattering mechanisms. The screening of the long-range Coulomb potential is treated using the random phase approximation coupled to the coherent potential approximation. The effect of the electron-phonon coupling is studied in second-order perturbation theory. The theory has essentially one free parameter, namely, the number of charge impurities per carbon, n^C_i. Our most important results are the finding of an anomalous enhancement of the conductivity in a frequency region that is blocked by Pauli exclusion, in a picture based on independent electrons, and an impurity broadening of the conductivity threshold, close to twice the chemical potential. We also find that phonons induce Stokes and anti-Stokes lines that produce an excess conductivity, when compared to the far infrared value of σ₀=(π/2)e.