arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Francisco Guinea.
The effects of the long range electrostatic interaction in twisted bilayer graphene are described using the Hartree-Fock approximation. The results show a significant dependence of the band widths and shapes on electron filling, and the existence of broken symmetry phases at many densities, either valley/spin polarized, with broken sublattice symmetry, or both.
We study the emergence of superconductivity in rhombohedral trilayer graphene due purely to the long-range Coulomb repulsion. This repulsive-interaction-driven phase in rhombohedral trilayer graphene is significantly different from those found in twisted bilayer and trilayer graphenes. In the latter case, the nontrivial momentum-space geometry of the Bloch wavefunctions leads to an effective attractive electron-electron interaction; this allows for less modulated order parameters and for spin-singlet pairing. In rhombohedral trilayer graphene, we instead find spin-triplet superconductivity with critical temperatures up to 0.15 K. The critical temperatures strongly depend on electron filling and peak where the density of states diverge. The order parameter shows a significant modulation within each valley pocket of the Fermi surface.
The polarizability of twisted bilayer graphene, due to the combined effect of electron-hole pairs, plasmons, and acoustic phonons is analyzed. The screened Coulomb interaction allows for the for- mation of Cooper pairs and superconductivity in a significant range of twist angles and fillings. The tendency toward superconductivity is enhanced by the coupling between longitudinal phonons and electron-hole pairs. Scattering processes involving large momentum transfers, Umklapp processes, play a crucial role in the formation of Cooper pairs. The magnitude of the superconducting gap changes among the different pockets of the Fermi surface.
The occurrence of superconducting and insulating phases is well-established in twisted graphene bilayers, and they have also been reported in other arrangements of graphene layers. We investigate three such arrangements: untwisted AB bilayer graphene on an hBN substrate, two graphene bilayers twisted with respect to each other, and a single ABC stacked graphene trilayer on an hBN substrate. Narrow bands with different topology occur in all cases, producing a high density of states which enhances the role of interactions. We investigate the effect of the long range Coulomb interaction, treated within the self consistent Hartree-Fock approximation. We find that the on-site part of the Fock potential strongly modifies the band structure at charge neutrality. The Hartree part does not significantly modify the shape and width of the bands in the three cases considered here, in contrast to the effect that such a potential has in twisted bilayer graphene.
Angle disorder is an intrinsic feature of twisted bilayer graphene and other moiré materials. Here, we discuss electron transport in twisted bilayer graphene in the presence of angle disorder. We compute the local density of states and the Landauer-Büttiker transmission through an angle disorder barrier of width comparable to the moiré period, using a decimation technique based on a real space description. We find that barriers which separate regions where the width of the bands differ by 50% or more lead to a minor suppression of the transmission, and that the transmission is close to one for normal incidence, which is reminiscent of Klein tunneling. These results suggest that transport in twisted bilayer graphene is weakly affected by twist angle disorder.
We study the symmetries of twisted trilayer graphene's band structure under various extrinsic perturbations, and analyze the role of long-range electron-electron interactions near the first magic angle. The electronic structure is modified by these interactions in a similar way to twisted bilayer graphene. We analyze electron pairing due to long-wavelength charge fluctuations, which are coupled among themselves via the Coulomb interaction and additionally mediated by longitudinal acoustic phonons. We find superconducting phases with either spin singlet/valley triplet or spin triplet/valley singlet symmetry, with critical temperatures of up to a few Kelvin for realistic choices of parameters.
Nonlinear mechanics of solids is an exciting field that encompasses both beautiful mathematics, such as the emergence of instabilities and the formation of complex patterns, as well as multiple applications. Two-dimensional crystals and van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures allow revisiting this field on the atomic level, allowing much finer control over the parameters and offering atomistic interpretation of experimental observations. In this work, we consider the formation of instabilities consisting of radially-oriented wrinkles around mono- and few-layer "bubbles" in two-dimensional vdW heterostructures. Interestingly, the shape and wavelength of the wrinkles depend not only on the thickness of the two-dimensional crystal forming the bubble, but also on the atomistic structure of the interface between the bubble and the substrate, which can be controlled by their relative orientation. We argue that the periodic nature of these patterns emanates from an energetic balance between the resistance of the top membrane to bending, which favors large wavelength of wrinkles, and the membrane-substrate vdW attraction, which favors small wrinkle amplitude. Employing the classical "Winkler foundation" model of elasticity theory, we show that the number of radial wrinkles conveys a valuable relationship between the bending rigidity of the top membrane and the strength of the vdW interaction. Armed with this relationship, we use our data to demonstrate a nontrivial dependence of the bending rigidity on the number of layers in the top membrane, which shows two different regimes driven by slippage between the layers, and a high sensitivity of the vdW force to the alignment between the substrate and the membrane.
Superconductors with nontrivial band structure topology represent a class of materials with unconventional and potentially useful properties. Recent years have seen much success in creating artificial hybrid structures exhibiting main characteristics of two-dimensional (2D) topological superconductors. Yet, bulk materials known to combine inherent superconductivity with nontrivial topology remain scarce, largely because distinguishing their central characteristic -- topological surface states -- proved challenging due to a dominant contribution from the superconducting bulk. Reported here is a highly anomalous behaviour of surface superconductivity in topologically nontrivial 3D superconductor In2Bi where the surface states result from its nontrivial band structure, which itself is a consequence of the non-symmorphic crystal symmetry and strong spin-orbit coupling. In contrast to smoothly decreasing diamagnetic susceptibility above the bulk critical field Hc2, associated with surface superconductivity in conventional superconductors, we observe near-perfect, Meissner-like screening of low-frequency magnetic fields well above Hc2. The enhanced diamagnetism disappears at a new phase transition close to the critical field of surface superconductivity Hc3. Using theoretical modelling, we show that the anomalous screening is consistent with modification of surface superconductivity due to the presence of topological surface states. The demonstrated possibility to detect signatures of the surface states using macroscopic magnetization measurements provides an important new tool for discovery and identification of topological superconductors.
Recent experiments have measured local uniaxial strain fields in twisted bilayer graphene (TBG). Our calculations found that the finite Berry curvature generated by breaking the sublattice symmetry and the band proximity between narrow bands in these TBG induces a giant Berry dipole of order 10\,nm or larger. The large Berry dipole leads to transverse topological non-linear charge currents which dominates over the linear bulk valley current at experimentally accessible crossover in-plane electric field of $\sim 0.1 {\rm mV} / μ\rm{m}$. This anomalous Hall effect, due to Berry dipole, is strongly tunable by the strain parameters, electron fillings, gap size, and temperature.
We study the effect of twisting on bilayer graphene. The effect of lattice relaxation is included; we look at the electronic structure, piezo-electric charges and spontaneous polarisation. We show that the electronic structure without lattice relaxation shows a set of extremely flat in-gap states similar to Landau-levels, where the spacing scales with twist angle. With lattice relaxation we still have flat bands, but now the spectrum becomes independent of twist angle for sufficiently small angles. We describe in detail the nature of the bands, and study appropriate continuum models, at the same time explaining the spectrum We find that even though the spectra for both parallel an anti-parallel alignment are very similar, the spontaneous polarisation effects only occur for parallel alignment. We argue that this suggests a large interlayer hopping between boron and nitrogen.
The efficiency of optical emitters can be dramatically enhanced by reducing the effective mode volume (the Purcell effect). Here we predict an analogous enhancement for electron-phonon (el-ph) scattering, achieved by compressing the electronic Wannier orbitals. Reshaping of Wannier orbitals is a prominent effect in graphene moiré superlattices (SLs) where the orbitals are tunable by the twist angle. A reduction of the orbital effective volume leads to an enhancement in the effective el-ph coupling strength, yielding the values considerably bigger than those known for pristine monolayer graphene. The enhanced coupling boosts the el-ph scattering rates, pushing them above the values predicted from the enhanced spectral density of electronic excitations. The enhanced phonon emission and scattering rates are manifest in the observables such as electron-lattice cooling and the linear-$T$ resistivity, both of which are directly tunable by the moiré twist angle.
Ultraflatbands that have been theoretically and experimentally detected in a bunch of van der Waals stacked materials showing some peculiar properties, for instance, highly localized electronic states and enhanced electron-electron interactions. In this Letter, using an accurate tight-binding model, we study the formation and evolution of ultraflatbands in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) under low rotation angles. We find that, unlike in twisted bilayer graphene, ultraflatbands exist in TMDCs for almost any small twist angles and their wave function becomes more localized when the rotation angle decreases. Lattice relaxation, pressure and local deformation can tune the width of the flatbands, as well as their localization. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of spin-orbit coupling on the flatbands and discover spin/orbital/valley locking at the minimum of the conduction band at the K point of the Brillouin zone. The ultraflatbands found in TMDCs with a range of rotation angle below $7^\circ$, may provide an ideal platform to study strongly correlated states.
In the emerging world of twisted bilayer structures, the possible configurations are limitless, which enables for a rich landscape of electronic properties. In this paper, we focus on twisted bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and study its properties by means of an accurate tight-binding model. We build structures with different angles and find that the so-called flatbands emerge when the twist angle is sufficiently small (around 7.3$^{\circ}$). Interestingly, the band gap can be tuned up to a 2.2\% (51 meV) when the twist angle in the relaxed sample varies from 21.8$^{\circ}$ to 0.8$^{\circ}$. Furthermore, when looking at local density of states we find that the band gap varies locally along the moirè pattern due to the change in the coupling between layers at different sites. Finally, we also find that the system can suffer a transition from a semiconductor to a metal when a sufficiently strong electric field is applied. Our study can serve as a guide for the practical engineering of the TMDCs based optoelectronic devices.
We revisit the indentation of a thin solid sheet of size $R_{sheet}$ suspended on a circular hole of radius $R \ll R_{sheet}$ in a smooth rigid substrate, addressing the effects of boundary conditions at the hole's edge. Introducing a basic theoretical model for the Van-der-Waals (VdW) sheet-substrate attraction, we demonstrate the dramatic effect of replacing the clamping condition (Schwerin model) with a sliding condition, whereby the supported part of the sheet is allowed to slide towards the indenter and relax the induced hoop compression through angstrom-scale deflections from the thermodynamic equilibrium (determined by the VdW potential). We highlight the possibility that the indentation force $F$ may not exhibit the commonly anticipated cubic dependence on the indentation depth ($F\propto δ^3$), in which the proportionality constant is governed by the sheet's stretching modulus and the hole's radius $R$, but rather a {\emph{pseduo-linear}} response, $F \propto δ$, whereby the proportionality constant is governed by the bending modulus, the VdW attraction, and the sheet's size $R_{sheet} \gg R$.
Suspended graphene exhibits ripples of size ranging from 50 to 100 Å and height $\sim$10Å, however, their origin remains undetermined. Previous theoretical works have proposed that rippling in graphene might be generated by the coupling between the bending modes and the density of electrons. These studies theoretically proposed that in the thermodynamic limit a membrane of single layer graphene displays a lattice instability for large enough electron-phonon coupling, undergoing a phase transition from a flat phase to a rippled one. In this work we solve the elasticity equations for a finite membrane of graphene coupled to the charge distribution, modeled in the tight-binding approximation, we find that the electron-phonon coupling controls a transition from a stable flat configuration to a stable rippled phase.
We study the interaction between graphene and a single-molecule-magnet, [Fe4(L)2(dpm)6]. Focusing on the closest Iron ion in a hollow position with respect to the graphene sheet, we derive a channel selective tunneling Hamiltonian, that couples different d orbitals of the Iron atom to precise independent combinations of sublattice and valley degrees of freedom of the electrons in graphene. When looking at the spin-spin interaction between the molecule and the graphene electrons, close to the Dirac point the channel selectivity results in a channel decoupling of the Kondo interaction, with two almost independent Kondo systems weakly interacting among themselves. The formation of magnetic moments and the development of a full Kondo effect depends on the charge state of the graphene layer.
The effect of an hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) layer close aligned with twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) is studied. At sufficiently low angles between twisted bilayer graphene and hBN, $θ_{hBN} \lesssim 2^\circ$, the graphene electronic structure is strongly disturbed. The width of the low energy peak in the density of states changes from $W \sim 5 - 10$ meV for a decoupled system to $\sim 20 - 30$ meV. Spikes in the density of states due to van Hove singularities are smoothed out. We find that for a realistic combination of the twist angle in the TBG and the twist angle between the hBN and the graphene layer the system can be described using a single moiré unit cell.
We analyze the phase diagram of twisted graphene bilayers near a magic angle. We consider the effect of the long range Coulomb interaction, treated within the self consistent Hartree-Fock approximation, and we study arbitrary band fillings. We find a rich phase diagram, with different broken symmetry phases, although tehy do not show necessarily a gap at the Fermi energy. There are non trivial effects of the electrostatic potential on the shape and the gaps of the bands in the broken symmetry phases. The results suggest that the non superconducting broken symmetry phases observed experimentally are induced by the long range exchange interaction.