Entropy spikes as a signature of Lifshitz transitions in the Dirac materials.

We demonstrate theoretically that the characteristic feature of a 2D system undergoing N consequent Lifshitz topological transitions is the occurrence of spikes of entropy per particle s of a magnitude ±ln2/(J - 1/2) with 2 ≤ J ≤ N at low temperatures. We derive a general expression for s as a function of chemical potential, temperature and gap magnitude for the gapped Dirac materials. Inside the smallest gap, the dependence of s on the chemical potential exhibits a dip-and-peak structure in the temperature vicinity of the Dirac point. The spikes of the entropy per particles can be considered as a signature of the Dirac materials. These distinctive characteristics of gapped Dirac materials can be detected in transport experiments where the temperature is modulated in gated structures.

Anomalous absorption line in the magneto-optical response of graphene.

The intensity as well as position in energy of the absorption lines in the infrared conductivity of graphene, both exhibit features that are directly related to the Dirac nature of its quasiparticles. We show that the evolution of the pattern of absorption lines as the chemical potential is varied encodes the information about the presence of the anomalous lowest Landau level. The first absorption line related to this level always appears with full intensity or is entirely missing, while all other lines disappear in two steps. We demonstrate that if a gap develops, the main absorption line splits into two provided that the chemical potential is greater than or equal to the gap.

Unusual microwave response of dirac quasiparticles in graphene.

Recent experiments have proven that the quasiparticles in graphene obey a Dirac equation. Here we show that microwaves are an excellent probe of their unusual dynamics. When the chemical potential is small, the intraband response can exhibit a cusp around zero frequency Omega and this unusual line shape changes to Drude-like by increasing the chemical potential |mu|, with width linear in mu. The interband contribution at T=0 is a constant independent of Omega with a lower cutoff at 2mu. Distinctly different behavior occurs if interaction-induced phenomena in graphene cause an opening of a gap Delta. At a large magnetic field B, the diagonal and Hall conductivities at small Omega become independent of B but remain nonzero and show a structure associated with the lowest Landau level. This occurs because in the Dirac theory the energy of this level, E0 = +/-Delta, is field independent in sharp contrast to the conventional case.

Unconventional integer quantum Hall effect in graphene.

Monolayer graphite films, or graphene, have quasiparticle excitations that can be described by (2+1)-dimensional Dirac theory. We demonstrate that this produces an unconventional form of the quantized Hall conductivity sigma(xy) = -(2e2/h)(2n+1) with n = 0, 1, ..., which notably distinguishes graphene from other materials where the integer quantum Hall effect was observed. This unconventional quantization is caused by the quantum anomaly of the n=0 Landau level and was discovered in recent experiments on ultrathin graphite films.