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Register a new userSpectroscopic evidence for a spin and valley polarized metallic state in a non-magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene
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In the magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MA-TBG), strong electron-electron (e-e) correlations caused by the band-flattening lead to many exotic quantum phases such as superconductivity, correlated insulator, ferromagnetism, and quantum anomalous Hall effects, when its low-energy van Hove singularities (VHSs) are partially filled. Here our high-resolution scanning tunneling microscope and spectroscopy measurements demonstrate that the e-e correlation in a non-magic-angle TBG with a twist angle {theta} = 1.49 still plays an important role in determining its electronic properties. Our most interesting observation on that sample is that when one of its VHS is partially filled, the one associated peak in the spectrum splits into four peaks. Our analysis based on the continuum model suggests that such a one-to-four split of the VHS originates from the formation of an interaction-driven spin-valley-polarized metallic state near the VHS, lifting both the spin and valley degeneracies. Our results for this non-magic-angle TBG reveal a new symmetry-breaking phase, which has not been identified in the MA-TBG or in other systems.
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Identifying the microscopic mechanism for superconductivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) is an outstanding open problem. While MATBG exhibits a rich phase-diagram, driven partly by the strong interactions relative to the electronic bandwidth, its single-particle properties are unique and likely play an important role in some of the phenomenological complexity. Some of the salient features include an electronic bandwidth smaller than the characteristic phonon bandwidth and a non-trivial structure of the underlying Bloch wavefunctions. We perform a theoretical study of the cooperative effects due to phonons and plasmons on pairing in order to disentangle the distinct role played by these modes on superconductivity. We consider a variant of MATBG with an enlarged number of fermion flavors, $N gg 1$, where the study of pairing instabilities reduces to the conventional (weak-coupling) Eliashberg framework. In particular, we show that certain umklapp processes involving mini-optical phonon modes, which arise physically as a result of the folding of the original acoustic branch of graphene due to the moire superlattice structure, contribute significantly towards enhancing pairing. We also investigate the role played by the dynamics of the screened Coulomb interaction on pairing, which leads to an enhancement in a narrow window of fillings, and study the effect of external screening due to a metallic gate on superconductivity. At strong coupling the dynamical pairing interaction leaves a spectral mark in the single particle tunneling density of states. We thus predict such features will appear at specific frequencies of the umklapp phonons corresponding to the sound velocity of graphene times an integer multiple of the Brillouin zone size.
Magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG) recently emerged as a highly tunable platform for studying correlated phases of matter, such as correlated insulators and superconductivity. Superconductivity occurs in a range of doping levels that is bounded by van Hove singularities which stimulates the debate of the origin and nature of superconductivity in this material. In this work, we discuss the role of spin-fluctuations arising from atomic-scale correlations in MATTG for the superconducting state. We show that in a phase diagram as function of doping ($ u$) and temperature, nematic superconducting regions are surrounded by ferromagnetic states and that a superconducting dome with $T_c approx 2,mathrm{K}$ appears between the integer fillings $ u =-2$ and $ u = -3$. Applying a perpendicular electric field enhances superconductivity on the electron-doped side which we relate to changes in the spin-fluctuation spectrum. We show that the nematic unconventional superconductivity leads to pronounced signatures in the local density of states detectable by scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements.
We present a systematic study of the low-energy collective modes for different insulating states at integer fillings in twisted bilayer graphene. In particular, we provide a simple counting rule for the total number of soft modes, and analyze their energies and symmetry quantum numbers in detail. To study the soft mode spectra, we employ time dependent Hartree-Fock whose results are reproduced analytically via an effective sigma model description. We find two different types of low-energy modes - (i) approximate Goldstone modes associated with breaking an enlarged U(4)$times$U(4) symmetry and, surprisingly, a set of (ii) nematic modes with non-zero angular momentum under three-fold rotation. The modes of type (i) include true gapless Goldstone modes associated with exact symmetries in addition to gapped pseudo-Goldstone modes associated with approximate symmetries. While the modes of type (ii) are always gapped, we show that their gap decreases as the Berry curvature grows more concentrated. For realistic parameter values, the gapped soft modes of both types have comparable gaps of only a few meV, and lie completely inside the mean-field bandgap. The entire set of soft modes emerge as Goldstone modes of a different idealized model in which Berry flux is limited to a solenoid, which enjoys an enlarged U(8) symmetry. Furthermore, we discuss the number of Goldstone modes for each symmetry-broken state, distinguishing the linearly vs quadratically dispersing modes. Finally, we present a general symmetry analysis of the soft modes for all possible insulating Slater determinant states at integer fillings that preserve translation symmetry, independent of the energetic details. The resulting soft mode degeneracies and symmetry quantum numbers provide a fingerprint of the different insulting states enabling their experimental identification from a measurement of their soft modes.
Strong electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) provide two non-trivial threads to condensed matter physics. When these two strands of physics come together, a plethora of quantum phenomena with novel topological order have been predicted to emerge in the correlated SOC regime. In this work, we examine the combined influence of electron correlation and SOC on a 2-dimensional (2D) electronic system at the atomic interface between magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) and a tungsten diselenide (WSe) crystal. In such a structure, strong electron correlation within the moire flatband stabilizes correlated insulating states at both quarter and half-filling, whereas SOC transforms these Mott-like insulators into ferromagnets, evidenced by robust anomalous Hall effect with hysteretic switching behavior. The coupling between spin and valley degrees of freedom is unambiguously demonstrated as the magnetic order is shown to be tunable with an in-plane magnetic field, or a perpendicular electric field. In addition, we examine the influence of SOC on the isospin order and stability of superconductivity. Our findings establish an efficient experimental knob to engineer topological properties of moire bands in twisted bilayer graphene and related systems.
We present a framework for understanding the recently observed cascade transitions and the Landau level degeneracies at every integer filling of twisted bilayer graphene. The Coulomb interaction projected onto narrow bands causes the charged excitations at an integer filling to disperse, forming new bands. If the excitation moves the filling away from the charge neutrality point, then it has a band minimum at the moire Brillouin zone center with a small mass that compares well with the experiment; if towards the charge neutrality point, then it has a much larger mass and a higher degeneracy. At a non-zero density away from an integer filling the excitations interact. The system on the small mass side has a large bandwidth and forms a Fermi liquid. On the large mass side the bandwidth is narrow, the compressibility is negative and the Fermi liquid is likely unstable. This explains the observed sawtooth features in compressibility, the Landau fans pointing away from charge neutrality as well as their degeneracies. By providing a description of the charge itineracy in the normal state this framework sets the stage for superconductivity at lower temperatures.
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