Graphene in periodic deformation fields: dielectric screening and plasmons

Abstract

We consider the effect of periodic scalar and vector potentials generated by periodic deformations of the graphene crystal lattice, on the energy spectrum of electrons. The dependence of electron velocity near the Dirac point on the periodic perturbations of different types is discussed. We also investigated the effect of screening of the scalar potential by calculating the dielectric function as a function of the wave length of the periodic potential. This calculation shows that the periodic scalar field is strongly suppressed by the screening. Using the dependence of electron velocity on the periodic field we also studied the variation of the plasmon spectra in graphene. We found that the spectrum of plasmon excitations can be effectively controlled by the periodic strain field.