Phase diagram and Fermi-liquid properties of the extended Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice

Abstract

The Hubbard model and extended Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice can be seen as prototype models of single layer graphene placed in a high dielectric constant environment that screens the Coulomb interaction. Taking advantage of the absence of a sign problem at half-filling, we study this problem with clusters up to 96 sites with the Determinant Quantum Monte Carlo Method as an impurity solver for the the Dynamical Cluster Approximation at finite temperatures. After determining the stability of the semi-metallic phase to interaction-induced spin-density wave (SDW), charge-density wave (CDW) and Mott insulating phases, we study the single particle dynamics of the Dirac fermions. We show that when spontaneous symmetry breaking is avoided, the semi-metallic phase is a stable Fermi liquid in the presence of repulsive interactions and that Kondo screening dominates the low temperature regime, even though there is a $\rho(\omega) = |\omega|$ type local density of states. We also investigate the impact of the correlation effects on the renormalization of the Fermi velocity $v_F$. We find that $v_F$ is not renormalized when only on-site repulsion $U$ is present, but that near-neighbor repulsion $V$ does renormalize $v_F$. This may explain the variations between different measurements of $v_F$ in graphene.