Gate-tunable topological phases in superlattice modulated bilayer graphene
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Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Huang, Chunli.
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We employ a functional renormalization group approach to ascertain the pairing mechanism and symmetry of the superconducting phase observed in rhombohedral trilayer graphene. Superconductivity in this system occurs in a regime of carrier density and displacement field with a weakly distorted annular Fermi sea. We find that repulsive Coulomb interactions can induce electron pairing on the Fermi surface by taking advantage of momentum-space structure associated with the finite width of the Fermi sea annulus. Furthermore, the degeneracy between spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairing is lifted by valley-exchange interactions that strengthen under the RG flow and develop nontrivial momentum-space structure. We find that the leading pairing instability is d-wave-like and spin-singlet, and that the theoretical phase diagram versus carrier density and displacement field agrees qualitatively with experiment.
We provide a theoretical interpretation of the metallic broken spin-valley (flavor) symmetry states recently discovered in hole-doped rhombohedral trilayer (ABC) graphene in large electric displacement fields. Our conclusions about the phase diagram and phase transitions combine insights from ABC graphene electronic structure models and mean-field theory, and are guided by the precise magneto-oscillation Fermi-surface-area measurements of recent experiments. We find that the principle of momentum-space condensation plays a key role in determining Fermi-surface reconstructions enabled by broken flavor symmetries when the single-particle bands imply thin annular Fermi seas. The reconstructed Fermi sea consists of one large outer Fermi-surface-enclosed majority-flavor states in reciprocal-space area A maj and one or more small inner holelike Fermi-surface-enclosed minority-flavor states in A min that are primarily responsible for nematic order. The competing ground states (valley-Ising, valley-XY, and spin-polarized state) have different A maj /A min and exchange energy maximizes this ratio and selects valley-XY nematic metal as the lowest-energy state. Here, we discuss how the nematic pockets explain the observed fractionalization of quantum oscillation frequencies, and propose anisotropic transport and the nonlinear Hall effect as additional observables.
We present a theory of superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene in which attraction is generated between electrons on the same honeycomb sublattice when the system is close to a sublattice polarization instability. The resulting Cooper pairs are spin-polarized valley singlets. Because the sublattice polarizability is mainly contributed by interband fluctuations, superconductivity occurs over a wide range of filling fraction. It is suppressed by (i) applying a sublattice polarizing field (generated by an aligned BN substrate) or (ii) changing moiré band filling to favor valley polarization. The enhanced intrasublattice attraction close to sublattice polarization instability is analogous to enhanced like-spin attraction in liquid 3 He near the melting curve and the enhanced valley-singlet repulsion close to valley-polarization instabilities is analogous to enhanced spin-singlet repulsion in metals that are close to a ferromagnetic instability. Here, we comment on the relationship between our pseudospin paramagnon model and the rich phenomenology of superconductivity in twisted bilayer and multilayer graphene.
Motivated by recent nonlocal transport studies of quantum-Hall-magnet (QHM) states formed in monolayer graphene’s N = 0 Landau level, here we study the scattering of QHM magnons by gate-controlled junctions between states with different integer filling factors ν . For the ν = 1 | – 1 | 1 geometry we find that magnons are weakly scattered by electric potential variation in the junction region, and that the scattering is chiral when the junction lacks a mirror symmetry. For the ν = 1 | 0 | 1 geometry, we find that kinematic constraints completely block magnon transmission if the incident angle exceeds a critical value. Our results explain the suppressed nonlocal–voltage signals observed in the ν = 1 | 0 | 1 case. We use our theory to propose that valley waves generated at ν = – 1 | 1 junctions and magnons can be used in combination to probe the spin or valley flavor structure of QHM states at integer and fractional filling factors.
Graphene multilayers with flat moiré minibands can exhibit the quantized anomalous Hall effect due to the combined influence of spontaneous valley polarization and topologically nontrivial valley-projected bands. The sign of the Hall effect in these Chern insulators can be reversed either by applying an external magnetic field, or by driving a transport current through the system. Here we propose a current-driven mechanism whereby reversal occurs along lines in the (current I , magnetic-field B ) control parameter space with slope d I / d B = ( e / h ) M A M ( 1 – γ 2 ) / γ , where M is the magnetization, A M is the moiré unit cell area, and γ < 1 is the ratio of the chemical potential difference between valleys along a domain wall to the electrical bias e V .