Experimental signatures of topological defects in graphene

We study the electronic structure of graphene with topological defects, in which some of the hexagonal plaquettes of the honeycomb lattice are replaced by pentagons or heptagons. Our tight-binding calculations show that the local electronic density of states becomes particle-hole asymmetric in the vicinity of such defects. This provides a means of experimentally distinguishing so-called ``plastic'' curvature from elastic deformation. We evaluate various analytic approaches to these defects and discuss their effects on scattering and transport.