Lattice Field Theory Study of Magnetic Catalysis in Graphene

Abstract

We discuss the simulation of the low-energy effective field theory (EFT) for graphene in the presence of an external magnetic field. Our fully nonperturbative calculation uses methods of lattice gauge theory to study the theory using a hybrid Monte Carlo approach. We investigate the phenomenon of magnetic catalysis in the context of graphene by studying the chiral condensate which is the order parameter characterizing the spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry. In the EFT, the symmetry breaking pattern is given by $U(4) \to U(2) \times U(2)$. We also comment on the difficulty, in this lattice formalism, of studying the time-reversal-odd condensate characterizing the ground state in the presence of a magnetic field. Finally, we study the mass spectrum of the theory, in particular the Nambu-Goldstone (NG) mode as well as the Dirac quasiparticle, which is predicted to obtain a dynamical mass.