Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 30: Transport: Graphene
(Joint session of DS, DY, HL, MA, O and TT, organized by TT)

DS 30.11: Talk

Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 12:30–12:45, H22

Graphene nanoribbons as effective spin ladders — •Cornelie Koop, Manuel J. Schmidt, and Stefan Wessel — Institut für Theoretische Festkörperphysik, RWTH Aachen University

Zigzag edges of graphene nanoribbons host particular, localized edge states. Since the density of states is strongly enhanced near the edges in graphene, interaction effects between the spins of these edge states become important. We can significantly simplify the analysis of such systems by means of an effective model that separates the edge and bulk states. Treating the effective interactions to first order proves sufficient in most cases, while second order corrections do not dramatically change the results. In many cases, the edge system can be reduced to a general spin ladder model, where the decay of the spin-spin interaction is determined by the shape of the edges. We examine these effective spin ladders at finite temperatures by means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations, using the stochastic series expansion method. Thereby, correlation functions and spin structure factors can be determined for realistically large graphene nanoribbons.