Wake effect in the interaction of slow correlated charges with supported graphene due to plasmon–phonon hybridization

We study correlated motion of two ions resulting from a dissociative grazing scattering of a slow diatomic molecular ion on supported graphene. A low-frequency collective mode resulting from hybridization of graphene's Dirac plasmon and the optical phonon modes in the insulating substrate may be excited by matching its phase velocity with the ion speed lower than the graphene Fermi speed. The resulting wake effect gives rise to the strongly directional, oscillatory patterns in both the inter-particle interaction potential and the total stopping power for the two ions, which may be detectable in their angular and the energy loss spectra.