Buckling and flat bands in twisted bilayer graphene

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: van Poppelen, Jannes, Black-Schaffer, Annica M.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author van Poppelen, Jannes
Black-Schaffer, Annica M.
author_facet van Poppelen, Jannes
Black-Schaffer, Annica M.
contents Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) with its flat bands provides a rich platform for exploring emergent electronic orders. Similarly, periodically buckled monolayer graphene has been proposed as a tunable alternative for realizing flat bands. Here, we investigate the combined effect of buckling and twisting in bilayer graphene. We find that periodic buckling in large-angle TBG initially enhances band flattening compared to monolayer graphene, but for sufficiently strong buckling, it instead increases the band dispersion. This occurs both because of the presence of interlayer coupling, which reduces the in-plane kinetic energy, and due to the opening of a gap at the Dirac point resulting from inversion-symmetry breaking. Additionally, we find that buckling-induced band flattening competes with twist-induced band flattening. While the former breaks sublattice symmetry, generating a sublattice polarization, the latter prefers to preserve it. This prevents buckling from generating even flatter bands at the magic angle. Nevertheless, we find that buckled TBG can exhibit flatter bands than pristine TBG over a wide range of twist angles, with a flatness similar to that of pristine magic-angle TBG.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_13471
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Buckling and flat bands in twisted bilayer graphene
van Poppelen, Jannes
Black-Schaffer, Annica M.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) with its flat bands provides a rich platform for exploring emergent electronic orders. Similarly, periodically buckled monolayer graphene has been proposed as a tunable alternative for realizing flat bands. Here, we investigate the combined effect of buckling and twisting in bilayer graphene. We find that periodic buckling in large-angle TBG initially enhances band flattening compared to monolayer graphene, but for sufficiently strong buckling, it instead increases the band dispersion. This occurs both because of the presence of interlayer coupling, which reduces the in-plane kinetic energy, and due to the opening of a gap at the Dirac point resulting from inversion-symmetry breaking. Additionally, we find that buckling-induced band flattening competes with twist-induced band flattening. While the former breaks sublattice symmetry, generating a sublattice polarization, the latter prefers to preserve it. This prevents buckling from generating even flatter bands at the magic angle. Nevertheless, we find that buckled TBG can exhibit flatter bands than pristine TBG over a wide range of twist angles, with a flatness similar to that of pristine magic-angle TBG.
title Buckling and flat bands in twisted bilayer graphene
topic Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.13471