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Flat Bands near Fermi Level of Topological Line Defects on Graphite

Flat bands play an important role in the study of strongly correlated phenomena, such as ferromagnetism, superconductivity, and fractional quantum Hall effect. Here we report direct experimental evidence for the presence of flat bands, close to the Fermi level, in one-dimensional topological defects on graphite seen as a pronounced peak in the tunnelling density of states. Our ab initio calculations indicate that the flat bands with vanishing Fermi velocity originate from sp2 dangling bonds (with antibonding nature) of undercoordinated carbon atoms at the edges of the defects. We further demonstrate that the presence of flat bands could be a universal behavior of 1D defects of graphene/graphite with undercoordinated carbon atoms at the edges of the defects.