English

Emergent fractals in hBN-encapsulated graphene based supermoir\'e structures and their experimental signatures

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2025-02-27 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Supermoir\'e structures (SMS), formed by overlapping moir\'e-patterns in van der Waals heterostructures, display complex behaviour that lacks a comprehensive low-energy theoretical description. We demonstrate that these structures can form emergent fractals under specific conditions and identify the parameter space where this occurs in hexagonal trilateral SMS. This fractality enables a reliable calculation of low-energy band counts, which are crucial for understanding both single-particle and correlation effects. Using an effective Hamiltonian that includes in- and out-of-plane lattice relaxation, we analyze SMS in hBN-encapsulated single and bilayer graphene. We prescribe methods to experimentally verify these fractals and extract their fractal dimension through angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.19017,
  title  = {Emergent fractals in hBN-encapsulated graphene based supermoir\'e structures and their experimental signatures},
  author = {Deepanshu Aggarwal and Rohit Narula and Sankalpa Ghosh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.19017},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 latexed pages, 4 Figures, supplementary .pdf file is available in the same url