Effect of nonlocal interlayer hopping on wave function in twisted bilayer graphene

Abstract

The conventional low-energy theory employed to describe twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) relies on a local interlayer Hamiltonian. According to this theory, TBG has the same linear-in-momentum dispersion and spinor wave function at the Dirac point as single-layer graphene (SLG), albeit with a renormalized velocity that decreases as the rotation angle between the layers decreases, eventually reaching zero at the magic angle. In this work, I expand upon this low-energy theory by including nonlocal terms in the interlayer part of the Hamiltonian, and explore the consequences at the Dirac point. It is found that the nonlocality predominantly influences the wave function rather than the energy spectrum: despite the persistence of the linear-in-momentum dispersion with a renormalized velocity, the wave functions no longer mirror those of SLG. Instead, an additional contribution to the phase difference between the sublattice components of the spinor emerges. This gives rise to interesting effects in scattering which are demonstrated with a simple example.