Tunable interplay between light and heavy electrons in twisted trilayer graphene

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Pierce, Andrew T., Xie, Yonglong, Park, Jeong Min, Cai, Zhuozhen, Watanabe, Kenji, Taniguchi, Takashi, Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo, Yacoby, Amir
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Pierce, Andrew T.
Xie, Yonglong
Park, Jeong Min
Cai, Zhuozhen
Watanabe, Kenji
Taniguchi, Takashi
Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo
Yacoby, Amir
author_facet Pierce, Andrew T.
Xie, Yonglong
Park, Jeong Min
Cai, Zhuozhen
Watanabe, Kenji
Taniguchi, Takashi
Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo
Yacoby, Amir
contents In strongly interacting systems with multiple energy bands, the interplay between electrons with different effective masses and the enlarged Hilbert space drives intricate correlated phenomena that do not occur in single-band systems. Recently, magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG) has emerged as a promising tunable platform for such investigations: the system hosts both slowly dispersing, "heavy" electrons inhabiting its flat bands as well as delocalized "light" bands that disperse as free Dirac fermions. Most remarkably, superconductivity in twisted trilayer graphene and multilayer analogues with additional dispersive bands exhibits Pauli limit violation and spans a wider range of phase space compared to that in twisted bilayer graphene, where the dispersive bands are absent. This suggests that the interactions between different bands may play a fundamental role in stabilizing correlated phases in twisted graphene multilayers. Here, we elucidate the interplay between the light and heavy electrons in MATTG as a function of doping and magnetic field by performing local compressibility measurements with a scanning single-electron-transistor microscope. We establish that commonly observed resistive features near moiré band fillings $ν$=-2, 1, 2 and 3 host a finite population of light Dirac electrons at the Fermi level despite a gap opening in the flat band sector. At higher magnetic field and near charge neutrality, we discover a new type of phase transition sequence that is robust over nearly 10 micrometers but exhibits complex spatial dependence. Mean-field calculations establish that these transitions arise from the competing population of the two subsystems and that the Dirac sector can be viewed as a new flavor analogous to the spin and valley degrees of freedom.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_12284
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tunable interplay between light and heavy electrons in twisted trilayer graphene
Pierce, Andrew T.
Xie, Yonglong
Park, Jeong Min
Cai, Zhuozhen
Watanabe, Kenji
Taniguchi, Takashi
Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo
Yacoby, Amir
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Strongly Correlated Electrons
In strongly interacting systems with multiple energy bands, the interplay between electrons with different effective masses and the enlarged Hilbert space drives intricate correlated phenomena that do not occur in single-band systems. Recently, magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG) has emerged as a promising tunable platform for such investigations: the system hosts both slowly dispersing, "heavy" electrons inhabiting its flat bands as well as delocalized "light" bands that disperse as free Dirac fermions. Most remarkably, superconductivity in twisted trilayer graphene and multilayer analogues with additional dispersive bands exhibits Pauli limit violation and spans a wider range of phase space compared to that in twisted bilayer graphene, where the dispersive bands are absent. This suggests that the interactions between different bands may play a fundamental role in stabilizing correlated phases in twisted graphene multilayers. Here, we elucidate the interplay between the light and heavy electrons in MATTG as a function of doping and magnetic field by performing local compressibility measurements with a scanning single-electron-transistor microscope. We establish that commonly observed resistive features near moiré band fillings $ν$=-2, 1, 2 and 3 host a finite population of light Dirac electrons at the Fermi level despite a gap opening in the flat band sector. At higher magnetic field and near charge neutrality, we discover a new type of phase transition sequence that is robust over nearly 10 micrometers but exhibits complex spatial dependence. Mean-field calculations establish that these transitions arise from the competing population of the two subsystems and that the Dirac sector can be viewed as a new flavor analogous to the spin and valley degrees of freedom.
title Tunable interplay between light and heavy electrons in twisted trilayer graphene
topic Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12284