Anomalous thermodynamics of Coulomb interacting massless Dirac fermions in two spatial dimensions

Abstract

It is argued that the specific heat of $N$ massless Dirac fermions in 2 spatial dimensions interacting with 1/r Coulomb interactions is suppressed logarithmically relative to its non-interacting counterpart. The (dimensionless) coefficient of the logarithm is calculated analytically in the leading order in large $N$ expansion, but to all orders in $e^2N$, a procedure which takes into account finite temperature screening. Experimental observation of this effect is expected to occur in a single layer graphene embedded in a dielectric medium. Its dependence on the dielectric constant is calculated analytically.