No Arabic abstract
We study conductance across a twisted bilayer graphene coupled to single-layer graphene leads in two setups: a flake of graphene on top of an infinite graphene ribbon and two overlapping semi-infinite graphene ribbons. We find conductance strongly depends on the angle between the two graphene layers and identify three qualitatively different regimes. For large angles ($theta gtrsim 10^{circ}$) there are strong commensurability effects for incommensurate angles the low energy conductance approaches that of two disconnected layers, while sharp conductance features correlate with commensurate angles with small unit cells. For intermediate angles ($3^{circ}lesssim theta lesssim 10^{circ}$), we find a one-to-one correspondence between certain conductance features and the twist-dependent Van Hove singularities arising at low energies, suggesting conductance measurements can be used to determine the twist angle. For small twist angles ($1^{circ}lesssimthetalesssim 3^{circ}$), commensurate effects seem to be washed out and the conductance becomes a smooth function of the angle. In this regime, conductance can be used to probe the narrow bands, with vanishing conductance regions corresponding to spectral gaps in the density of states, in agreement with recent experimental findings.
Topological insulators realized in materials with strong spin-orbit interactions challenged the long-held view that electronic materials are classified as either conductors or insulators. The emergence of controlled, two-dimensional moire patterns has opened new vistas in the topological materials landscape. Here we report on evidence, obtained by combining thermodynamic measurements, local and non-local transport measurements, and theoretical calculations, that robust topologically non-trivial, valley Chern insulators occur at charge neutrality in twisted double-bilayer graphene (TDBG). These time reversal-conserving valley Chern insulators are enabled by valley-number conservation, a symmetry that emerges from the moire pattern. The thermodynamic gap extracted from chemical potential measurements proves that TDBG is a bulk insulator under transverse electric field, while transport measurements confirm the existence of conducting edge states. A Landauer-Buttiker analysis of measurements on multi-terminal samples allows us to quantitatively assess edge state scattering and demonstrate that it does not destroy the edge states, leaving the bulk-boundary correspondence largely intact.
We discuss plasmons of biased twisted bilayer graphene when the Fermi level lies inside the gap. The collective excitations are a network of chiral edge plasmons (CEP) entirely composed of excitations in the topological electronic edge states (EES) that appear at the AB-BA interfaces. The CEP form an hexagonal network with an unique energy scale $epsilon_p=frac{e^2}{epsilon_0epsilon t_0}$ with $t_0$ the moire lattice constant and $epsilon$ the dielectric constant. From the dielectric matrix we obtain the plasmon spectra that has two main characteristics: (i) a diverging density of states at zero energy, and (ii) the presence of a plasmonic Dirac cone at $hbaromegasimepsilon_p/2$ with sound velocity $v_D=0.0075c$, which is formed by zigzag and armchair current oscillations. A network model reveals that the antisymmetry of the plasmon bands implies that CEP scatter at the hexagon vertices maximally in the deflected chiral outgoing directions, with a current ratio of 4/9 into each of the deflected directions and 1/9 into the forward one. We show that scanning near-field microscopy should be able to observe the predicted plasmonic Dirac cone and its broken symmetry phases.
Using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy, the real part of optical conductivity [$sigma_{1}(omega)$] of twisted bilayer graphene was obtained at different temperatures (10 -- 300 K) in the frequency range 0.3 -- 3 THz. On top of a Drude-like response, we see a strong peak in $sigma_{1} (omega)$ at $sim$2.7 THz. We analyze the overall Drude-like response using a disorder-dependent (unitary scattering) model, then attribute the peak at 2.7 THz to an enhanced density of states at that energy, that is caused by the presence of a van Hove singularity arising from a commensurate twisting of the two graphene layers.
We study the localization properties of electrons in incommensurate twisted bilayer graphene for small angles, encompassing the narrow-band regime, by numerically exact means. Sub-ballistic states are found within the narrow-band region around the magic angle. Such states are delocalized in momentum-space and follow non-Poissonian level statistics, in contrast with their ballistic counterparts found for close commensurate angles. Transport results corroborate this picture: for large enough systems, the conductance decreases with system size for incommensurate angles within the sub-ballistic regime. Our results show that incommensurability effects are of crucial importance in the narrow-band regime. The incommensurate nature of a general twist angle must therefore be taken into account for an accurate description of magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene.
We numerically investigate the electronic transport properties between two mesoscopic graphene disks with a twist by employing the density functional theory coupled with non-equilibrium Greens function technique. By attaching two graphene leads to upper and lower graphene layers separately, we explore systematically the dependence of electronic transport on the twist angle, Fermi energy, system size, layer stacking order and twist axis. When choose different twist axes for either AA- or AB-stacked bilayer graphene, we find that the dependence of conductance on twist angle displays qualitatively distinction, i.e., the systems with top axis exhibit finite conductance oscillating as a function of the twist angle, while the ones with hollow axis exhibit nearly vanishing conductance for different twist angles or Fermi energies near the charge neutrality point. These findings suggest that the choice of twist axis can effectively tune the interlayer conductance, making it a crucial factor in designing of nanodevices with the twisted van der Waals multilayers.