Using Weyl symmetry to make Graphene a real lab for fundamental physics

Understand

In the first attempt to introduce gauge theories in physics, Hermann Weyl, around the 1920s, proposed certain scale transformations to be a fundamental symmetry of nature.

• Despite the intense use of Weyl symmetry that has been made over the decades, in various theoretical settings, this idea never found its way to the laboratory.
• Recently, building-up from work by Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh and collaborators on the Weyl-gauge symmetry, applications of Weyl-symmetry to the electronic properties of graphene have been put forward, first, in a theoretical setting, and later, in an experimental proposal.
• Here I review those results, by enlarging and deepening the discussion of certain aspects, and by pointing to the steps necessary to make graphene a testing ground of fundamental ideas.