Eur. Phys. J. B (2012) 85: 356
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2012-30716-7

Regular Article

Relativistic Brownian motion on a graphene chip

¹ Department of Mathematics, University of Cape Town, 7701 Rondebosch, South Africa
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Camerino, 62032 Camerino, Italy
³ Department of Physics, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
⁴ Institut für Physik, Universität Augsburg, 86135 Augsburg, Germany

^a e-mail: S.Saveliev@lboro.ac.uk

Received: 2 August 2012
Received in final form: 28 August 2012
Published online: 24 October 2012

Abstract

Relativistic Brownian motion can be inexpensively demonstrated on a graphene chip. The interplay of stochastic and relativistic dynamics, governing the transport of charge carrier in graphene, induces noise-controlled effects such as (i) a stochastic effective mass, detectable as a suppression of the particle mobility with increasing the temperature; (ii) transverse harmonic mixing, whereby electron transport can be controlled by two orthogonal, commensurate ac drives; (iii) a transverse ratchet effect, measurable as a net current orthogonal to an ac drive on an asymmetric substrate, and (iv) chaotic stochastic resonance. Such properties can be of practical applications in the emerging graphene technology.