Coulomb interactions and ferromagnetism in pure and doped graphene

Abstract

We study the presence of ferromagnetism in the phase diagram of the two-dimensional honeycomb lattice close to half-filling (graphene) as a function of the strength of the Coulomb interaction and doping. We show that exchange interactions between Dirac fermions can stabilize a ferromagnetic phase at low doping when the coupling is sufficiently large. In clean systems the zero-temperature phase diagram shows both first-order and second-order transition lines and two distinct ferromagnetic phases: one phase with only one type of carriers (either electrons or holes) and another with two types of carriers (electrons and holes). Using the coherent potential approximation we argue that disorder further stabilizes the ferromagnetic phase. This work should estimulate Monte Carlo calculations in graphene dealing with the long-range nature of the Coulomb potencial.