Comment Re:Can anybody summarize TFA? (Score 5, Informative) 184
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The title of TFA is "Dynamical mass generation via space compactification in graphene", which is mostly incomprehensible.
The abstract sez "Fermions in a graphene sheet behave like massless particles. We show that by folding the sheet into a tube they acquire non-zero effective mass as they move along the tube axis. That is, changing the space topology of graphene from 2D to 1D (space compactification) changes the 2D massless problem into an effective massive 1D problem."
A plain english annotated translation is "Electrons in a graphene sheet behave like massless particles. We show that by folding the sheet into a tube they behave like massive particles as they move along the tube axis. That is, changing the shape of graphene from 2D to 1D changes the 2D massless problem into an effective 1D massive problem, which may be easier to solve or model or understand in certain respects.
Note electrons have the same real mass in both cases. Mass is not being created or destroyed.