A number of moire graphene systems have nearly flat topological bands where electron motion is strongly correlated. Though microscopically these systems are only quasiperiodic, they can typically be treated as translation invariant to an excellent approximation. Here we reconsider this question for magic angle twisted bilayer graphene that is nearly aligned with a hexagonal boron nitride(h-BN) substrate. We carefully study the effect of the periodic potential induced by h-BN on the low energy physics. The combination of this potential and the moire lattice produced by the twisted graphene generates a quasi-periodic term that depends on the alignment angle between h-BN and the moire graphene. We find that the alignment angle has a significant impact on both the band gap near charge neutrality and the behavior of electrical transport. We also introduce and study toy models to illustrate how a quasi-periodic potential can give rise to localization and change in transport properties of topological bands.
Recently twisted bilayer graphene (t-BLG) emerges as a new strongly correlated physical platform near a magic twist angle, which hosts many exciting phenomena such as the Mott-like insulating phases, unconventional superconducting behavior and emergent ferromagnetism. Besides the apparent significance of band flatness, band topology may be another critical element in determining strongly correlated twistronics yet receives much less attention. Here we report compelling evidence for nontrivial noninteracting band topology of t-BLG moire Dirac bands through a systematic nonlocal transport study, in conjunction with an examination rooted in $K$-theory. The moire band topology of t-BLG manifests itself as two pronounced nonlocal responses in the electron and hole superlattice gaps. We further show that the nonlocal responses are robust to the interlayer electric field, twist angle, and edge termination, exhibiting a universal scaling law. While an unusual symmetry of t-BLG trivializes Berry curvature, we elucidate that two $Z_2$ invariants characterize the topology of the moire Dirac bands, validating the topological edge origin of the observed nonlocal responses. Our findings not only provide a new perspective for understanding the emerging strongly correlated phenomena in twisted van der Waals heterostructures, but also suggest a potential strategy to achieve topologically nontrivial metamaterials from topologically trivial quantum materials based on twist engineering.
We propose Landau levels as a probe for the topological character of electronic bands in two-dimensional moire superlattices. We consider two configurations of twisted double bilayer graphene (TDBG) that have very similar band structures, but show different valley Chern numbers of the flat bands. These differences between the AB-AB and AB-BA configurations of TDBG clearly manifest as different Landau level sequences in the Hofstadter butterfly spectra calculated using the tight-binding model. The Landau level sequences are explained from the point of view of the distribution of orbital magnetization in momentum space that is governed by the rotational $C_2$ and time-reversal $mathcal{T}$ symmetries. Our results can be readily extended to other twisted graphene multilayers and $h$-BN/graphene heterostructures thus establishing the Hofstadter butterfly spectra as a powerful tool for detecting the non-trivial valley band topology.
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.
The study of topological bandstructures is an active area of research in condensed matter physics and beyond. Here, we combine recent progress in this field with developments in machine-learning, another rising topic of interest. Specifically, we introduce an unsupervised machine-learning approach that searches for and retrieves paths of adiabatic deformations between Hamiltonians, thereby clustering them according to their topological properties. The algorithm is general as it does not rely on a specific parameterization of the Hamiltonian and is readily applicable to any symmetry class. We demonstrate the approach using several different models in both one and two spatial dimensions and for different symmetry classes with and without crystalline symmetries. Accordingly, it is also shown how trivial and topological phases can be diagnosed upon comparing with a generally designated set of trivial atomic insulators.
Atomically thin van der Waals materials stacked with an interlayer twist have proven to be an excellent platform towards achieving gate-tunable correlated phenomena linked to the formation of flat electronic bands. In this work we demonstrate the formation of emergent correlated phases in multilayer rhombohedral graphene - a simple material that also exhibits a flat electronic band but without the need of having a moire superlattice induced by twisted van der Waals layers. We show that two layers of bilayer graphene that are twisted by an arbitrary tiny angle host large (micron-scale) regions of uniform rhombohedral four-layer (ABCA) graphene that can be independently studied. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy reveals that ABCA graphene hosts an unprecedentedly sharp flat band of 3-5 meV half-width. We demonstrate that when this flat band straddles the Fermi level, a correlated many-body gap emerges with peak-to-peak value of 9.5 meV at charge neutrality. Mean field theoretical calculations indicate that the two primary candidates for the appearance of this broken symmetry state are a charge transfer excitonic insulator and a ferrimagnet. Finally, we show that ABCA graphene hosts surface topological helical edge states at natural interfaces with ABAB graphene which can be turned on and off with gate voltage, implying that small angle twisted double bilayer graphene is an ideal programmable topological quantum material.