Igor Herbut
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
The two-dimensional form of carbon, also known as graphene, has been hailed as wonder material promising, and already delivering, many useful applications. This is not the only reason, however, why many theoretical physicists have been fascinated with this new material over the last ten years. The reason is also that the electronic structure of graphene provides an unusually simple and affordable playground for studies of some of the basic concepts of modern quantum physics. In this lecture I will attempt to give an elementary discussion of three of these: 1) Mott-insulator (or ``Higgs") quantum phase transition, and the emerging relativity, 2) the spontaneous braking of ``chiral" symmetry, and the ``Dirac masses" of graphene, and 3) the Jackiw-Rebbi zero-modes, topological defects, and their (Clifford) algebras.