Revealing the hidden correlated electronic structure of strained graphene

We explore the effect of isotropic strain on the electronic structure of graphene. It is shown that the interplay between one-particle band narrowing and sizable multiorbital Coulomb interactions induces a transition from a Dirac-liquid semimetal to an orbital selective metal characterized by narrow [pi]-orbital Kondo clouds and abrupt downshift of [sigma]* states. The correlated electronic structure we derive is promising in the sense that it leads to results that might explain the reshaped electronic structure of graphene nanobubbles probed in scanning tunneling microscopy. Our proposal is a key step in understanding the intricate and interdependent changes in orbital and electronic degrees of freedom of strained materials with hexagonal lattice structure.