Space charge and screening of a supercritical impurity cluster in monolayer graphene

A Coulomb impurity of charge Ze is known to destabilize the ground state of undoped graphene with respect to creation of screening space charge when Z exceeds the critical value Zc=1/2α set by the material's fine structure constant α. Recent experimental advances have made it possible to explore this transition in a controlled manner by tuning Z across the critical point. Combined with relatively large value of α this makes it possible to study graphene's screening response to a supercritical impurity Zα≫1 when the screening charge is large using a Thomas-Fermi analysis. The character of screening in this regime is controlled by the dimensionless screening parameter Zα2. Specifically, for a circular impurity cluster in the weak-screening regime Zα2≪1 most of the screening charge is found to reside outside the cluster. The strong-screening regime Zα2≫1 provides a realization of the Thomson atom: Most of the screening charge is inside the cluster, nearly perfectly neutralizing the source charge with the exception of a transition layer near the cluster's edge where the rest of the space charge is localized.