Beyond the constant-mass Dirac physics: Solitons, charge fractionization, and the emergence of topological insulators in graphene rings

The doubly-connected polygonal geometry of planar graphene rings is found to bring forth topological configurations for accessing nontrivial relativistic quantum field (RQF) theory models that carry beyond the constant-mass Dirac-fermion theory. These include generation of sign-alternating masses, solitonic excitations, and charge fractionization. The work integrates a RQF Lagrangian formulation with numerical tight-binding Aharonov-Bohm electronic spectra and the generalized position-dependent-mass Dirac equation. In contrast to armchair graphene rings (aGRGs) with pure metallic arms, certain classes of aGRGs with semiconducting arms, as well as with mixed metallic-semiconducting ones, are shown to exhibit properties of one-dimensional nontrivial topological insulators. This further reveals an alternative direction for realizing a graphene-based nontrivial topological insulator through the manipulation of the honeycomb lattice geometry, without a spin-orbit contribution.

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