Interplay of resonant states and Landau levels in functionalized graphene

Abstract

Adsorbates can drastically alter physical properties of graphene. Particularly important are adatoms and admolecules that induce resonances at the Dirac point. Such resonances limit electron mobilities and spin relaxation times. We present a systematic tight-binding as well as analytical modeling to investigate the properties of resonant states in the presence of a quantizing magnetic field. Landau levels are strongly influenced by the resonances, especially close to the Dirac point. Here the cyclotron motion of electrons around a defect leads to the formation of circulating local currents which are manifested by the appearance of side peaks around the zero-energy Landau level. Our study is based on realistic parameters for H, F, and Cu adatoms, each exhibiting distinct spectral features in the magnetic field. We also show that by observing a local density of states around an adatom in the presence of Landau levels useful microscopic model parameters can be extracted.