The importance of electron-electron interactions in the RKKY coupling in graphene

Abstract

We show that the carrier-mediated exchange interaction, the so-called RKKY coupling, between two magnetic impurity moments in graphene is significantly modified in the presence of electron-electron interactions. Using the mean-field approximation of the Hubbard-$U$ model we show that the $(1+\cos(2{\bf k}_D\cdot {\bf R})$-oscillations present in the bulk for non-interacting electrons disappear and the power-law decay becomes more long ranged with increasing electron interactions. In zigzag graphene nanoribbons the effects are even larger with any finite $U$ rendering the long-distance RKKY coupling distance independent. Comparing our mean-field results with first-principles results we also extract a surprisingly large value of $U$ indicating that graphene is very close to an antiferromagnetic instability.