Quantum phase transition triggering magnetic bound states in the continuum in graphene

Abstract

Graphene hosting a pair of collinear adatoms in the phantom atom configuration has pseudogap with cubic scaling on energy, $\Delta\propto|\varepsilon|^{3}$ which leads to the appearance of spin-degenerate bound states in the continuum (BICs) [Phys. Rev. B 92, 045409 (2015)]. In the case when adatoms are locally coupled to a single carbon atom the pseudogap scales linearly with energy, which prevents the formation of BICs. In this Letter, we explore the effects of non-local coupling characterized by the Fano factor of interference $q_{0},$ tunable by changing the slope of the Dirac cones in the graphene band-structure. We demonstrate that three distinct regimes can be identified: i) for $q_{0}<q_{c1}$ (critical point) a mixed pseudogap $\Delta\propto|\varepsilon|,|\varepsilon|^{2}$ appears yielding a phase with spin-degenerate BICs; ii) near $q_{0}=q_{c1}$ when $\Delta\propto|\varepsilon|^{2}$ the system undergoes a quantum phase transition in which the new phase is characterized by magnetic BICs and iii) at a second critical value $q_{0}>q_{c2}$ the cubic scaling of the pseudogap with energy $\Delta\propto|\varepsilon|^{3}$ characteristic to the phantom atom configuration is restored and the phase with non-magnetic BICs is recovered. The phase with magnetic BICs can be described in terms of an effective intrinsic exchange field of ferromagnetic nature between the adatoms mediated by graphene monolayer. We thus propose a new type of quantum phase transition resulting from the competition between the states characterized by spin-degenerate and magnetic BICs.