Excitonic effects in the optical conductivity of gated graphene

N. M. R. Peres, R. M. Ribeiro, A. H. Castro Neto

Published 2010-02-02, updated 2010-07-05Version 2

We study the effect of electron-electron interactions in the optical conductivity of graphene under applied bias and derive a generalization of Elliot's formula, commonly used for semiconductors, for the optical intensity. We show that {\it excitonic resonances} are responsible for several features of the experimentally measured mid-infrared response of graphene such as the increase of the conductivity beyond the "universal" value above the Fermi blocked regime, the broadening of the absorption at the threshold, and the decrease of the optical conductivity at higher frequencies. Our results are also in agreement with {\it ab initio} calculations in the neutral regime.