Kekulé Spiral Order from Strained Topological Heavy Fermions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah, Călugăru, Dumitru, Hu, Haoyu, Yu, Jiabin, Regnault, Nicolas, Kang, Jian, Bernevig, B. Andrei, Vafek, Oskar
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah
Călugăru, Dumitru
Hu, Haoyu
Yu, Jiabin
Regnault, Nicolas
Kang, Jian
Bernevig, B. Andrei
Vafek, Oskar
author_facet Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah
Călugăru, Dumitru
Hu, Haoyu
Yu, Jiabin
Regnault, Nicolas
Kang, Jian
Bernevig, B. Andrei
Vafek, Oskar
contents The topological heavy fermion (THF) model of twisted bilayer graphene is a framework for treating its strongly interacting topological flat bands. In this work, we employ the THF model with heterostrain and particle-hole symmetry breaking corrections to study its symmetry-broken ground states. We find that the heterostrain correction motivates a specific parent-state wavefunction which dictates the presence or absence of an incommensurate Kekulé spiral (IKS) at each integer filling by invoking Dirac node braiding and annihilation as a mechanism to achieve low energy gapped states. We then show that one-shot Hartree-Fock faithfully replicates the numerical results of fully self-consistent states and motivates an analytical approximation for the IKS wavevector. We can also account for the particle-hole asymmetry in the correlated insulator gaps. In particular, the THF model predicts stronger correlated states on the electron side rather than hole side in agreement with magic angle experiments, despite the electron side being more dispersive in the single-particle band structure. This work demonstrates that we can analytically explain even the more subtle symmetry breaking order properties observed in experiments where heterostrain, relaxation, and interactions together determine the ground state.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_08700
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Kekulé Spiral Order from Strained Topological Heavy Fermions
Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah
Călugăru, Dumitru
Hu, Haoyu
Yu, Jiabin
Regnault, Nicolas
Kang, Jian
Bernevig, B. Andrei
Vafek, Oskar
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
The topological heavy fermion (THF) model of twisted bilayer graphene is a framework for treating its strongly interacting topological flat bands. In this work, we employ the THF model with heterostrain and particle-hole symmetry breaking corrections to study its symmetry-broken ground states. We find that the heterostrain correction motivates a specific parent-state wavefunction which dictates the presence or absence of an incommensurate Kekulé spiral (IKS) at each integer filling by invoking Dirac node braiding and annihilation as a mechanism to achieve low energy gapped states. We then show that one-shot Hartree-Fock faithfully replicates the numerical results of fully self-consistent states and motivates an analytical approximation for the IKS wavevector. We can also account for the particle-hole asymmetry in the correlated insulator gaps. In particular, the THF model predicts stronger correlated states on the electron side rather than hole side in agreement with magic angle experiments, despite the electron side being more dispersive in the single-particle band structure. This work demonstrates that we can analytically explain even the more subtle symmetry breaking order properties observed in experiments where heterostrain, relaxation, and interactions together determine the ground state.
title Kekulé Spiral Order from Strained Topological Heavy Fermions
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08700