Dispersion forces between weakly disordered van der Waals crystals

2019/03/31 by Jonas von Milczewski, John R. Tolsma
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Coulomb #Dispersion (optics) #Electron #Geometry #Graphene research and applications #London dispersion force #Materials science #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Scaling #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el #physics.optics #quant-ph #van der Waals force

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.104.125111

published as Phys. Rev. B 104, 125111 (2021) · 10 pages, 8 figures. Added references and revised interpretation of results

openalex publication_date 2021/09/08 · arxiv created 2021/11/03 · arxiv updated 2021/11/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We describe a many-body theory for interlayer dispersion forces between weakly disordered atomically thin crystals and numerically investigate the role of disorder for different layer-separation distances and for different densities of induced electrons and holes. In contrast to the common wisdom that disorder tends to enhance the importance of Coulomb interactions in Fermi liquids, we find that short-range disorder tends to weaken interlayer dispersion forces. This is in line with previous findings that suggest that transitioning from metallic to insulating propagation weakens interlayer dispersion forces. We demonstrate that disorder alters the scaling laws of dispersion forces and we comment on the role of the maximally crossed vertex-correction diagrams responsible for logarithmic divergences in the resistivity of two-dimensional metals.

Citations

• The theory of molecular attractive forces between solids
• A Collective Description of Electron Interactions. I. Magnetic Interactions
• Observation of Quantized Hall Drag in a Strongly Correlated Bilayer Electron System
• The general theory of van der Waals forces
• Nonuniversality of the dispersion interaction: analytic benchmarks for van der Waals energy functionals
• A Collective Description of Electron Interactions: III. Coulomb Interactions in a Degenerate Electron Gas
• Accurate Molecular Van Der Waals Interactions from Ground-State Electron Density and Free-Atom Reference Data
• A Collective Description of Electron Interactions: II. CollectivevsIndividual Particle Aspects of the Interactions
• Bose–Einstein condensation of excitons in bilayer electron systems
• Prediction of Dispersion Forces: Is There a Problem?
• �ber das Verh�ltnis der van der Waalsschen Kr�fte zu den hom�opolaren Bindungskr�ften