There is a newer version of the record available.

Published 2019 | Version v1
Journal article

Magic angle hierarchy in twisted graphene multilayers

Description

When two monolayers of graphene are stacked with a small relative twist angle, the resulting band structure exhibits a remarkably flat pair of bands at a sequence of "magic angles" where correlation effects can induce a host of exotic phases. Here we study a class of related models of n-layered graphene with an alternating relative twist angle ±θ which exhibits magic angle flat bands coexisting with several Dirac dispersing bands at the moiré K point. Remarkably, we find that the Hamiltonian for the multilayer system can be mapped exactly to a set of decoupled bilayers at different angles, revealing a remarkable hierarchy mathematically relating all these magic angles to the TBG case. For the trilayer case (n=3), we show that the sequence of magic angle is obtained by multiplying the bilayer magic angles by 2, whereas the quadrilayer case (n=4) has two sequences of magic angles obtained by multiplying the bilayer magic angles by the golden ratio φ=(5+1)/2≈1.62 and its inverse. We also show that for larger n, we can tune the angle to obtain several narrow (almost flat) bands simultaneously and that for n → ∞, there is a continuum of magic angles for θ ≲ 2°. Furthermore, we show that tuning several perfectly flat bands for a small number of layers is possible if the coupling between different layers is different. Furthermore, the setup proposed here can be readily achieved by repeatedly applying the "tear and stack" method without the need of any extra tuning of the twist angle and has the advantage that the first magic angle is always larger than the bilayer case.

Availability note (English)

Available from https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1572042; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1572042; DOE Accepted Manuscript full text, or the publishers Best Available Version will be available free of charge after the embargo period

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review B
Journal Volume
100
Journal Issue
8
Journal Page Range
vp.
ISSN
2469-9950

INIS

Country of Publication
United States
Country of Input or Organization
United States
INIS RN
54040949
Subject category
S77: NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY;
Descriptors DEI
COUPLING; GRAPHENE; HAMILTONIANS; LAYERS
Descriptors DEC
CARBON; ELEMENTS; MATHEMATICAL OPERATORS; NONMETALS; QUANTUM OPERATORS

Optional Information