Manifestations of $(2+1)d$ chiral anomaly in a graphene plate

Abstract

Inspired by the Dirac model model of graphene, we consider a $(2+1)$-dimensional fermionic system in which fermions are described by four-component spinors. These fermions are proposed to interact with an electromagnetic field originating from a four-dimensional setting, as the graphene plate is embedded in 4d Minkowski spacetime. In this framework, a chiral anomaly arises at the boundary of the plate, stemming from a non-local anomaly action that depends on both the electromagnetic and chiral gauge fields when the chiral transformation is localized. This results in boundary chiral and electric currents, and we explore potentially observable effects when external magnetic or electric fields are applied to the fermionic system.