In-plane magnetic response and Maki parameter of alternating-twist multilayers

Abstract

We analytically study the orbital response of alternating-twist multilayer graphene to an in-plane magnetic field using the unitary transformation introduced by Khalaf et al. [Phys. Rev. B 100, 085109 (2019)]. This transformation maps an alternating-twist $N$-layer system onto $N/2$ decoupled twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) systems with distinct effective twist angles, together with a single decoupled layer for odd $N$, thereby generating a hierarchy of effective magic angles. For systems with an odd number of layers, we find that the orbital in-plane magnetic response is negligibly small. For even systems, we express the in-plane orbital susceptibility in terms of the corresponding TBG responses in the flat-band regime, which are large compared to the spin susceptibility and even diverge in the clean limit at charge neutrality near the magic angle. For the finite even-layer systems considered in this work, the in-plane magnetic response strongly depends on the effective magic angle within the hierarchy: the larger the twist angle, the smaller the total response. Moreover, we find a general relation between the outermost interlayer and total susceptibilities of the system when the corresponding effective TBG subsystem is in the flat-band regime. We finally introduce the in-plane Maki parameter as the ratio of the difference in orbital susceptibility between the normal and superconducting states to the paramagnetic Pauli susceptibility. For TBG, we find values up to 2 near the magic angle. Our analysis shows that for certain magic angles, the interpretation of Pauli-limit violation in alternating-twist multilayers requires taking into account the orbital contribution to the in-plane magnetic response.