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- Title
Universal layer number in graphite.
- Authors
Sasaki, K.; Hitachi, K.
- Abstract
Graphene absorbs light in accordance with the fine-structure constant α ≃ 1/137. The α value is universal in the sense that it is unrelated to material parameters but solely related to the elementary charge, which is a fundamental constant governing the coupling of light and matter. A new universality governed only by α has yet to be discovered in graphene optics. However, since α is a dimensionless quantity, it can be anticipated that the reciprocal of α appears as a characteristic number of layers in the light absorptance of an N-layer graphene. Here, we report that this number is 2/πα. We show simultaneously that for light in the infrared to visible range, an N-layer graphene with N above 1500 may be regarded as graphite. This also enables us to obtain the simplest expression for the optical constants of graphite, which is written in terms of α and interlayer distance only. The fine structure constant is a dimensionless quantity describing the light-matter interactions of a material. Here, the authors, using a transfer matrix, present a formula for calculating the optical constants of graphite as a function of layer number and interlayer distance.
- Subjects
GRAPHITE; LIGHT matter interaction (Quantum optics); OPTICAL constants; DIMENSIONLESS numbers; FINE structure (Physics)
- Publication
Communications Physics, 2020, Vol 3, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2399-3650
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s42005-020-0354-y