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Lattice relaxation, mirror symmetry and magnetic field effects on ultraflat bands in twisted trilayer graphene

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Abstract

Twisted graphene multilayers exhibit strongly correlated insulating states and superconductivity due to the presence of ultraflat bands near the charge neutral point. In this paper, the response of ultraflat bands to lattice relaxation and a magnetic field in twisted trilayer graphene (tTLG) with different stacking arrangements is investigated by using a full tight-binding model. We show that lattice relaxations are indispensable for understanding the electronic properties of tTLG, in particular, of tTLG in the presence of mirror symmetry. Lattice relaxations renormalize the quasiparticle spectrum near the Fermi energy and change the localization of higher energy flat bands. Furthermore, different from the twisted bilayer graphene, the Hofstadter butterfly spectrum can be realized at laboratory accessible strengths of magnetic field. Our work verifies tTLG as a more tunable platform than the twisted bilayer graphene in strongly correlated phenomena.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Artificial Micro- and Nano-structures of the Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Zewen Wu, Zhen Zhan & Shengjun Yuan

Authors
  1. Zewen Wu
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  2. Zhen Zhan
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhen Zhan or Shengjun Yuan.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11774269, and 12047543), the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2018FYA0305800), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, China (Grant No. 2020CFA041). Numerical calculations presented in this paper were performed on the supercomputing system in the Supercomputing Center of Wuhan University.

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Wu, Z., Zhan, Z. & Yuan, S. Lattice relaxation, mirror symmetry and magnetic field effects on ultraflat bands in twisted trilayer graphene. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 64, 267811 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-020-1690-4

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