English

Magic Angle Butterfly in Twisted Trilayer Graphene

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2023-06-14 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

We consider a configuration of three stacked graphene monolayers with commensurate twist angles θ12/θ23=p/q\theta_{12}/\theta_{23}=p/q, where pp and qq are coprime integers with 0<p<q0<p<|q| and qq can be positive or negative. We study this system using the continuum model in the chiral limit when interlayer coupling terms between AA12\textrm{AA}_{12} and AA23\textrm{AA}_{23} sites of the moir\'{e} patterns 1212 and 2323 are neglected. There are only three inequivalent displacements between the moir\'{e} patterns 1212 and 2323, at which the three monolayers' Dirac zero modes are protected. Remarkably, for these displacements and an arbitrary p/qp/q we discover exactly flat bands at an infinite set of twist angles (magic angles). We provide theoretical explanation and classification of all possible configurations and topologies of the flat bands.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.16385,
  title  = {Magic Angle Butterfly in Twisted Trilayer Graphene},
  author = {Fedor K. Popov and Grigory Tarnopolsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.16385},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

9 pages, 2 tables, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:46:40.985Z