Generalized effective hamiltonian for graphene under non-uniform strain

Abstract

We use a symmetry approach to construct a systematic derivative expansion of the low energy effective Hamiltonian modifying the continuum Dirac description of graphene in the presence of non-uniform elastic deformations. We extract all experimentally relevant terms and describe their physical significance. Among them there is a new gap-opening term that describes the Zeeman coupling of the elastic pseudomagnetic field and the pseudospin. We determine the value of the couplings using a generalized tight binding model.