Screening Charged Impurities and Lifting the Orbital Degeneracy in Graphene by Populating Landau Levels

Abstract

We report the observation of an isolated charged impurity in graphene and present direct evidence of the close connection between the screening properties of a 2D electron system and the influence of the impurity on its electronic environment. Using scanning tunneling microscopy and Landau level spectroscopy, we demonstrate that in the presence of a magnetic field the strength of the impurity can be tuned by controlling the occupation of Landau-level states with a gate voltage. At low occupation the impurity is screened, becoming essentially invisible. Screening diminishes as states are filled until, for fully occupied Landau levels, the unscreened impurity significantly perturbs the spectrum in its vicinity. In this regime we report the first observation of Landau-level splitting into discrete states due to lifting the orbital degeneracy.