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Correlated Phases in Spin-Orbit-Coupled Rhombohedral Trilayer Graphene

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2025-09-16 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Superconductivity

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that crystalline graphene multilayers exhibit much of the richness of their twisted counterparts, including cascades of symmetry-broken states and unconventional superconductivity. Interfacing Bernal bilayer graphene with a WSe2_2 monolayer was shown to dramatically enhance superconductivity -- suggesting that proximity-induced spin-orbit coupling plays a key role in promoting Cooper pairing. Motivated by this observation, we study the phase diagram of spin-orbit-coupled rhombohedral trilayer graphene via self-consistent Hartree-Fock simulations, elucidating the interplay between displacement field effects, long-range Coulomb repulsion, short-range (Hund's) interactions, and substrate-induced Ising spin-orbit coupling. In addition to generalized Stoner ferromagnets, we find various flavors of intervalley coherent ground states distinguished by their transformation properties under electronic time reversal, C3\text{C}_3 rotations, and an effective anti-unitary symmetry. We pay particular attention to broken-symmetry phases that yield Fermi surfaces compatible with zero-momentum Cooper pairing, identifying promising candidate orders that may support spin-orbit-enhanced superconductivity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.12486,
  title  = {Correlated Phases in Spin-Orbit-Coupled Rhombohedral Trilayer Graphene},
  author = {Jin Ming Koh and Jason Alicea and Étienne Lantagne-Hurtubise},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.12486},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages, 8 figures, 1 table in main text; 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 table in appendices; current version similar to published version