Wake effect in doped graphene due to moving external charge

Abstract

We use the dielectric-response formalism to evaluate the induced density of charge carriers in supported graphene due to an external moving charged particle in terms of its velocity and distance from graphene for several equilibrium charge carrier densities due to graphene doping. We show that, when the particle speed exceeds a threshold value, an oscillatory wake effect develops in the induced charge density trailing the particle. Strong effects are observed in the wake pattern due to finite size of the graphene-substrate gap, as well as due to strong coupling effects, and plasmon damping of graphenes pi electrons. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.