No Arabic abstract
We study the electronic structures and topological properties of $(M+N)$-layer twisted graphene systems. We consider the generic situation that $N$-layer graphene is placed on top of the other $M$-layer graphene, and is twisted with respect to each other by an angle $theta$. In such twisted multilayer graphene (TMG) systems, we find that there exists two low-energy flat bands for each valley emerging from the interface between the $M$ layers and the $N$ layers. These two low-energy bands in the TMG system possess valley Chern numbers that are dependent on both the number of layers and the stacking chiralities. In particular, when the stacking chiralities of the $M$ layers and $N$ layers are opposite, the total Chern number of the two low-energy bands for each valley equals to $pm(M+N-2)$ (per spin). If the stacking chiralities of the $M$ layers and the $N$ layers are the same, then the total Chern number of the two low-energy bands for each valley is $pm(M-N)$ (per spin). The valley Chern numbers of the low-energy bands are associated with large, valley-contrasting orbital magnetizations, suggesting the possible existence of orbital ferromagnetism and anomalous Hall effect once the valley degeneracy is lifted either externally by a weak magnetic field or internally by Coulomb interaction through spontaneous symmetry breaking.
Gapped graphene has been proposed to be a good platform to observe the valley Hall effect, a transport phenomenon involving the flow of electrons that are characterized by different valley indices. In the present work, we show that this phenomenon is better described as an instance of the orbital Hall effect, where the ambiguous valley indices are replaced by a physical quantity, the orbital magnetic moment, which can be defined uniformly over the entire Brillouin zone. This description removes the arbitrariness in the choice of arbitrary cut-off for the valley-restricted integrals in the valley Hall conductivity, as the conductivity in the orbital Hall effect is now defined as the Brillouin zone integral of a new quantity, called the orbital Berry curvature. This reformulation in terms of OHE provides the direct explanation to the accumulated opposite orbital moments at the edges of the sample, observed in previous Kerr rotation measurements.
The observation of the anomalous quantum Hall effect in exfoliated graphene flakes triggered an explosion of interest in graphene. It was however not observed in high quality epitaxial graphene multilayers grown on silicon carbide substrates. The quantum Hall effect is shown on epitaxial graphene monolayers that were deliberately grown over substrate steps and subjected to harsh processing procedures, demonstrating the robustness of the epitaxial graphene monolayers and the immunity of their transport properties to temperature, contamination and substrate imperfections. The mobility of the monolayer C-face sample is 19,000 cm^2/Vs. This is an important step towards the realization of epitaxial graphene based electronics.
We study the anomalous Hall effect, magneto-optical properties, and nonlinear optical properties of twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) aligned with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) substrate as well as twisted double bilayer graphene systems. We show that non-vanishing valley polarizations in twisted graphene systems would give rise to anomalous Hall effect which can be tuned by in-plane magnetic fields. The valley polarized states are also associated with giant Faraday/Kerr rotations in the terahertz frequency regime. Moreover, both hBN-aligned TBG and TDBG exhibit colossal nonlinear optical responses by virtue of the inversion-symmetry breaking, the small bandwidth, and the small excitation gaps of the systems. Our calculations indicate that in both systems the nonlinear optical conductivities of the shift currents are on the order of $10^3,mu$A/V$^2$; and the second harmonic generation (SHG) susceptibilities are on the order of $10^6,$pm/V in the terahertz frequency regime. Moreover, in TDBG with $ABtextrm{-}BA$ stacking, we find that a finite orbital magnetization would generate a new component $sigma^{x}_{xx} $ of the nonlinear photoconductivity tensor; while in $AB$-$AB$ stacked TDBG with vertical electric fields, the valley polarization and orbital magnetization would make significant contributions to the $sigma^{y}_{xx}$ component of the photoconductivity tensor. These nonlinear photo-conductivities are proportional to the orbital magnetizations of the systems, thus they are expected to exhibit hysteresis behavior in response to out-of-plane magnetic fields.
We theoretically study the correlated insulator states, quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) states, and field-induced topological transitions between different correlated states in twisted multilayer graphene systems. Taking twisted bilayer-monolayer graphene and twisted double-bilayer graphene as examples, we show that both systems stay in spin polarized, $C_{3z}$-broken insulator states with zero Chern number at 1/2 filling of the flat bands under finite displacement fields. In some cases these spin polarized, nematic insulator states are in the quantum valley Hall phase by virtue of the nontrivial band topology of the systems. The spin polarized insulator state is quasi-degenerate with the valley polarized state when only the dominant intra-valley Coulomb interactions are included. Such quasi-degeneracy can be split by atomic on-site interactions such that the spin polarized, nematic state become the unique ground state. Such a scenario applies to various twisted multilayer graphene systems at 1/2 filling, thus can be considered as a universal mechanism. Moreover, under vertical magnetic fields, the giant orbital Zeeman splittings in twisited multilayer graphene systems compete with the atomic Hubbard interactions, which can drive transitions from spin polarized zero-Chern-number states to valley-polarized QAH states with small onset magnetic fields.
Graphene subject to high levels of shear strain leads to strong pseudo-magnetic fields resulting in the emergence of Landau levels. Here we show that, with modest levels of strain, graphene can also sustain a classical valley hall effect (VHE) that can be detected in nonlocal transport measurements. We provide a theory of the strain-induced VHE starting from the quantum Boltzmann equation. This allows us to show that, averaging over short-range impurity configurations destroys quantum coherence between valleys, leaving the elastic scattering time and inter-valley scattering rate as the only parameters characterizing the transport theory. Using the theory, we compute the nonlocal resistance of a Hall bar device in the diffusive regime. Our theory is also relevant for the study of moderate strain effects in the (nonlocal) transport properties of other two-dimensional materials and van der Walls heterostructures.