Patrick Gallagher, Chan-Shan Yang, Tairu Lyu, Fanglin Tian, Rai Kou1, Hai Zhang, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi
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| Probing the electrodynamics of graphene using on-chip terahertz spectroscopy. (A) Current carrying modes of a graphene sheet. The zero-momentum mode corresponds to a plasma of counterpropagating electrons and holes and can be relaxed by electron-hole interactions. The finite-momentum mode corresponds to a fluid of co-propagating electrons or holes with nonzero net charge and cannot be relaxed by charge-carrier interactions. The vector J denotes the net current flow. (B) Cartoon of the sample. Photoconductive switches (“emitter” and “detector”) triggered by a pulsed laser emit and detect terahertz pulses within the waveguide. The transmitted pulse is reconstructed by measuring the current collected by the preamplifier (“A”) as a function of delay between laser pulse trains illuminating the emitter and detector. The graphene is optionally excited by a separate pulsed beam (“pump”) to heat the electron system. (C) Photograph of the heterostructure embedded in the waveguide. Few-layer graphene (FLG) electrodes make contact to the monolayer graphene sheet under study and the WS2 gate electrode. Scale bar: 15 micron. Credit: Science, doi:10.1126/science.aat8687 |
Graphene near charge neutrality is expected to behave like a quantum-critical, relativistic plasma—the “Dirac fluid”—in which massless electrons and holes rapidly collide at a rapid rate. We measure the frequency-dependent optical conductivity of clean, micron-scale graphene at electron temperatures between 77 and 300 K using on-chip terahertz spectroscopy. At charge neutrality, we observe the quantum-critical scattering rate characteristic of the Dirac fluid. At higher doping, we uncover two distinct current-carrying modes with zero and nonzero total momenta, a manifestation of relativistic hydrodynamics. Our work reveals the quantum criticality and unusual dynamic excitations near charge neutrality in graphene.
