Interacting Dirac Matter

The discovery of graphene in 2004 has led to a surge of activities focused on the theoretical and experimental studies of materials hosting linearly dispersive quasiparticles during the last decade. Rapid expansion in the list of materials having similar properties to graphene has led to the emergence of a new class of materials known as the Dirac materials. The low energy quasiparticles in this class of materials are described by a Dirac-like equation in contrast to the Schrödinger equation which governs the low energy dynamics in any conventional materials such as metals. The Dirac fermions, as we call these low-energy quasiparticles, in a wide range of materials ranging from the d-wave superconductors, graphene to the surface states of topological insulators share the common property. The particles move around as if they have lost their mass. This feature results in a completely new set of physical effects consisting of various transport and thermodynamic quantities, that are absent in conventional metals. This thesis is devoted to studying the properties of bosonic analogs of the commonly known Dirac materials where the quasiparticle are fermionic. In chapter one, we discuss the microscopic origin of the Dirac equation in several fermionic and bosonic systems. We observe identical features of the Dirac materials with quasiparticles of either statistics when the interparticle interaction is absent. Dirac materials with both types of quasiparticles possess the nodal excitations that are described by an effective Dirac-like equation. The possible physical effects due to the linear dispersions in fermionic and bosonic Dirac materials are also outlined. In chapter two, we propose a system of superconducting grains arranged in honeycomb lattice as a realization for Bosonic Dirac Materials (BDM). The underlying microscopic dynamics, which give rise to the emergence of Dirac structure in the spectrum of the collective phase oscillations, is discussed in detail. Similarities and differences of BDM systems to the conventional Dirac materials with fermionic quasiparticles are also mentioned. Chapter three is dedicated to the detailed analysis of the interaction effects on the stability and renormalization of the conical Dirac band structure. We find that the type of interaction dictates the possible fate of renormalized Dirac cone in both fermionic and bosonic Dirac materials. We study interaction effects in four different individual systems : (a) Dirac fermions in graphene interacting via Coulomb interactions, (b) Dirac fermions subjected to an onsite Hubbard repulsion, (c) Coulomb repulsion in charged Cooper pairs in honeycomb lattice and (d) Dirac magnons interacting via Heisenberg exchange interaction. The possibility of interaction induced gap opening at the Dirac nodal point described is also discussed in these cases. Chapter four mainly concerns the study of a related topic of the synthetic gauge fields. We discuss the possibility of Landau quantization in neutral particles. Possible experimental evidence in toroidal cold atomic traps is also mentioned. A connection to Landau levels in case of magnons is also described. We finally conclude our thesis in chapter five and discuss the possible future directions that can be taken as an extension for our works in interacting Dirac materials.QC 20180516This thesis contains all the works performed during my doctoral study in physics at Nordita, Sweden.