Emergent orbital-selective many-body effects upon doping strained graphene

Abstract

We explore the effect of doping on the correlated electronic structure of strained graphene. It is shown that the interplay between sizable multiorbital Coulomb interactions and electron-hole doping induces an orbital-selective electronic state, characterized by the coexistence of $\ensuremath{\pi}$-band Dirac-Kondo quasiparticles and emergent $\ensuremath{\sigma}$-band metallicity. The underlying orbital selectivity in the presence of spin-polarized electron bands, relevant to experiments of strained graphene proximitized to magnetic ions, shows coexistent Mott-localized and semimetal electronic states with, respectively, $\ensuremath{\pi}$- and $\ensuremath{\sigma}$-orbital character. Our results provide the theoretical foundations for understanding the intricate and interdependent changes in orbital degrees of freedom in strained carbon-based materials, and they open up an avenue to systematic studies of quantum many-body effects in correlated Dirac fermion systems.