Optical absorption in trilayer graphene

We use a low energy effective model to analyze the optical responses of trilayer graphene samples. We first show that optical absorption of the ABA-stacked trilayer has strong dependence on both the Fermi energy and optical frequency, which is in sharp contrast to that of ABC-stacked trilayer graphene. Secondly, we are able to determine the possible existence of trigonal warping effects in the bandstructure of ABC-stacked trilayer graphene by a divergence in the absorption spectra at around 10 meV. In addition, we can partially distinguish the vairious broken symmetry states driven by electron-electron interactions in ABC-stacked trilayer graphene. In particular, the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) state is sensitive to the polarization of the incident light, giving a way to detect its possible existence.