The shear viscosity of interacting graphene

Abstract

One of the hallmark properties of fluids is their shear viscosity which is, among other things, responsible for parabolic flow profiles through narrow channels. In recent years, there has been a growing number of observations of said flow profiles in electronic transport measurements in a variety of material systems, most notably in graphene. In this paper, we investigate the shear viscosity of interacting graphene from a theoretical point of view. We study both a phenomenological as well as a microscopic model and find excellent agreement between the two. Our main finding is collective modes make a sizeable contribution to the viscosity that can equal or even outweigh the electronic contribution that is usually assumed dominant. We comment on how this finding carries over to systems beyond graphene and related Dirac materials.