English

Quantum valley Hall effect, orbital magnetism, and anomalous Hall effect in twisted multilayer graphene systems

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2019-08-14 v2

Abstract

We study the electronic structures and topological properties of (M+N)(M+N)-layer twisted graphene systems. We consider the generic situation that NN-layer graphene is placed on top of the other MM-layer graphene, and is twisted with respect to each other by an angle θ\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 MM layers and the NN 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 MM layers and NN layers are opposite, the total Chern number of the two low-energy bands for each valley equals to ±(M+N2)\pm(M+N-2) (per spin). If the stacking chiralities of the MM layers and the NN layers are the same, then the total Chern number of the two low-energy bands for each valley is ±(MN)\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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1903.10419,
  title  = {Quantum valley Hall effect, orbital magnetism, and anomalous Hall effect in twisted multilayer graphene systems},
  author = {Jianpeng Liu and Zhen Ma and Jinhua Gao and Xi Dai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.10419},
  year   = {2019}
}