Electrons imitating light: Frustrated supercritical collapse in charged arrays on graphene

The photon-like electronic dispersion of graphene bestows its charge carriers with unusual confinement properties that depend strongly on the geometry and strength of the surrounding potential. Here we report bottom-up synthesis of atomically-precise one-dimensional (1D) arrays of point charges aimed at exploring supercritical confinement of carriers in graphene for new geometries. The arrays were synthesized by arranging F4TCNQ molecules into a 1D lattice on back-gated graphene devices, allowing precise tuning of both the molecular charge state and the array periodicity. Dilute arrays of ionized F4TCNQ molecules are seen to behave like isolated subcritical charges but dense arrays show emergent supercriticality. In contrast to compact supercritical clusters, extended 1D charge arrays exhibit both supercritical and subcritical characteristics and belong to a new physical regime termed frustrated supercritical collapse. Here carriers in the far-field are attracted by a supercritical charge distribution, but have their fall to the center frustrated by subcritical potentials in the near-field, similar to the trapping of light by a dense cluster of stars in general relativity.