  Screening is one of the fundamental concepts in solid state physics. It has a
great impact on the electronic properties of graphene where huge mobilities
were observed in spite of the large concentration of charged impurities. While
static screening has successfully explained DC mobilities, screening properties
can be significantly changed at infrared or optical frequencies. In this paper
we discuss the influence of dynamical screening on the optical absorption of
graphene and other 2D electron systems like metallic monolayers. This research
is motivated by recent experimental results which pointed out that graphene
plasmon linewidths and optical scattering rates can be much larger than
scattering rates determined by DC mobilities. Specifically we discuss a process
where a photon incident on a graphene plane can excite a plasmon by scattering
from an impurity, or surface optical phonon of the substrate.

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics