Graphene with wedge disclination in the presence of intrinsic and Rashba spin orbit couplings

Abstract

In this article, the modified Kane-Mele Hamiltonian is derived for graphene with wedge disclination and spin orbit couplings (intrinsic and Rashba). The wedge disclination changes the flat lattice into the conical lattice and hence modifies the spin orbit couplings. The Hamiltonian is exactly solved for the intrinsic spin orbit interaction and perturbatively for the Rashba spin orbit interaction. It is shown that there exists Kramer's degenerate midgap localized spin separated fluxon states around the defect. These zero energy spin separated states occur at the external magnetic flux value Φ±ΔΦ. The external magnetic flux Φ is introduced to make the wave function periodic when the electron circulates around the defect. It is found that this separation occurs due to the effect of the conical curvature on the spin orbit coupling. Further, we find these results are robust to the addition of the Rashba spin orbit interaction which is important for the application to spintronics and nanoelectronics.