Theory of substrate, Zeeman, and electron-phonon interaction effects on the quantum capacitance in graphene

Abstract

Since the discovery of graphene, a lot of interest has been attracted by the zeroth Landau level, which has no analog in the conventional two dimensional electron gas. Recently, lifting of the spin and valley degeneracies has been confirmed experimentally by capacitance measurements, while in transport experiments, this is difficult due to the scattering in the device. In this context, we model interaction effects on the quantum capacitance of graphene in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field, finding good agreement with experiments. We demonstrate that the valley degeneracy is lifted by the substrate and by Kekule distortion, whereas the spin degeneracy is lifted by Zeeman interaction. The two cases can be distinguished by capacitance measurements.