Soliton fractional charge of disordered graphene nanoribbon

Abstract

We investigate the properties of the gap-edge states of half-filled interacting disordered zigzag graphene nanoribbons. We find that the midgap states can display the quantized fractional charge of 1/2. These gap-edge states can be represented by topological kinks with their site probability distribution divided between the opposite zigzag edges with different chiralities. In addition, there are numerous spin-split gap-edge states, similar to those in a Mott-Anderson insulator.