Low-frequency optical conductivity in graphene and in other scale-invariant two-band systems

Abstract

We investigate optical transitions of non-interacting electron systems consisting of two symmetric energy bands touching each other at the Fermi energy (e.g. graphene at half filling). Optical conductivity is obtained using Kubo formula at zero temperature. We show that for particles whose pseudospin direction is determined solely by the direction of their momentum, the optical conductivity has power law frequency dependence with the exponent $(d-2)/z$ where $d$ is the dimension of the system and $z$ is the dynamical exponent. According to our result two-dimensional systems with the above pseudospin characteristics always exhibit frequency-independent optical conductivity.