Thermodynamic properties of a magnetically modulated graphene

SK Firoz Islam, Naveen K. Singh, Tarun Kanti Ghosh

Published 2011-07-15, updated 2011-09-12Version 2

The effect of magnetic modulation on thermodynamic properties of a graphene monolayer in presence of a constant perpendicular magnetic field is reported here. One-dimensional spatial electric or magnetic modulation lifts the degeneracy of the Landau levels and converts into bands and their band width oscillates with magnetic field leading to Weiss-type oscillation in the thermodynamic properties. The effect of magnetic modulation on thermodynamic properties of a graphene sheet is studied and then compared with electrically modulated graphene and magnetically modulated conventional two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). We observe Weiss-type and de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) oscillations at low and high magnetic field, respectively. There is a definite phase difference in Weiss-type oscillations in thermodynamic quantities of magnetically modulated graphene in compare to electrically modulated graphene. On the other hand, the phase remains same and amplitude of the oscillation is large when compared with the magnetically modulated 2DEG. Explicit asymptotic expressions of density of states and the Helmholtz free energy are provided to understand the phase and amplitude of the Weiss-type oscillations qualitatively. We also study thermodynamic properties when both electric and magnetic modulations are present. The Weiss-type oscillations still exist when the modulations are out-of-phase.