Graphene: Relativistic transport in a nearly perfect quantum liquid

Abstract

Electrons and holes in clean, charge-neutral graphene behave like a strongly coupled relativistic liquid. The thermo-electric transport properties of the interacting Dirac quasiparticles are rather special, being constrained by an emergent Lorentz covariance at hydrodynamic frequency scales. At small carrier density and high temperatures, graphene exhibits signatures of a quantum critical system with an inelastic scattering rate set only by temperature, a conductivity with a nearly universal value, solely due to electron-hole friction, and a very low viscosity. In this regime one finds pronounced deviations from standard Fermi liquid behavior. These results, obtained by Boltzmann transport theory at weak electron-electron coupling, are fully consistent with the predictions of relativistic hydrodynamics. Interestingly, very analogous behavior is found in certain strongly coupled relativistic liquids, which can be analyzed exactly via the AdS-CFT correspondence, and which had helped identifying and establishing the peculiar properties of graphene.