Equations-of-motion method for triplet excitation operators in graphene

Abstract

The particle–hole continuum in the Dirac sea of graphene has a unique window underneath, which in principle leaves room for bound state formation in the triplet particle–hole channel (Baskaran and Jafari 2002 Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 016402). In this work, we construct appropriate triplet particle–hole operators and, using a repulsive Hubbard-type effective interaction, we employ equations of motion to derive approximate eigenvalue equations for such triplet operators. While the secular equation for the spin density fluctuations gives rise to an equation which is second order in the strength of the short range interaction, the explicit construction of the triplet operators obtained here shows that, in terms of these operators, the second-order equation can be factorized to two first-order equations, one of which gives rise to a solution below the particle–hole continuum of Dirac electrons in undoped graphene.