In this work we show that the trigonal warping of the electronic bands in bilayer graphene dramatically modifies the behavior of the one-dimensional modes topologically confined due to an inhomogeneous bias that changes sign across a channel. The topologically protected states are present but their behavior is disrupted from the predicted in the isotropic approximation. We present detailed studies of the electronic properties of the 1D channel in function of the orientation of the channel.
We study the superlattice minibands produced by the interplay between moiré pattern induced by hexagonal BN substrate on graphene layer and the interlayer coupling in bilayer graphene with Bernal stacking (BLG). We compare moiré miniband features in BLG, where they are affected by the interlayer asymmetry of BLG-hBN heterostructure and trigonal warping characteristic for electrons in Bernal-stacked bilayers with those found in monolayer graphene.
We derive an effective Hamiltonian at low energies for bilayer graphene when Fermi velocity manufactured on each layer is different of the velocity measured in pristine graphene. Based on the effective Hamiltonian, we investigate the influence of Fermi velocity asymmetry on the band structure of trigonally warped bilayer graphene in the presence of interlayer applied bias. In this case, the Fermi line at low energies is still preserved its threefold rotational symmetry appearing as the three pockets. Furthermore, the interlayer asymmetry in Fermi velocities leads to an indirect band gap which …
The stability of the zero-energy Landau levels in bilayer graphene against the chiral symmetric disorder is examined in the presence of the trigonal warping. Based on the tight-binding lattice model with a bond disorder correlated over several lattice constants, it is shown that among the four Landau levels per spin and per valley, two Landau levels exhibit the anomalous sharpness as in the absence of the trigonal warping, while the other two are broadened, yielding split peaks in the density of states. This can be attributed to the fact that the total chirality in each valley is +2 or -2, whi…
We calculate the form of quasiparticle interference patterns in bilayer graphene within a low-energy description, taking into account perturbatively the trigonal warping terms. We introduce four different types of impurities localized on the A and B sublattices of the first and the second layer, and we obtain closed-form analytical expressions both in real and Fourier spaces for the oscillatory corrections to the local density of states generated by the impurities. Finally, we compare our findings with recent experimental and semi-analytical T-matrix results from arXiv:2104.10620 and we show t…
Using a reformulated Kubo formula we calculate the zero-energy minimal conductivity of bilayer graphene taking into account the small but finite trigonal warping. We find that the conductivity is independent of the strength of the trigonal warping and it is three times as large as that without trigonal warping, and six times larger than that in single layer graphene. Although the trigonal warping of the dispersion relation around the valleys in the Brillouin zone is effective only for low energy excitations, our result shows that its role cannot be neglected in the zero-energy minimal conducti…
Divergent density of states offers the unique opportunity to explore a wide variety of correlated electron physics. In the thinnest limit, this has been predicted and verified in the ultra-flat bands of magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, the band touching points of few-layer rhombohedral graphite, and the lightly doped rhombohedral trilayer graphene. The simpler and seemingly better understood Bernal bilayer graphene is also susceptible to orbital magnetism-driven phases at charge neutrality, such as layer antiferromagnet and quantum anomalous Hall octet. Here we report the discovery of a c…
Due to low dimensionality, the controlled stacking of the graphene films and their electronic properties are susceptible to environmental changes including strain. The strain-induced modification of the electronic properties such as the emergence and modulation of bandgaps crucially depends on the stacking of the graphene films. However, to date, only the impact of strain on electronic properties of Bernal and AA-stacked bilayer graphene has been extensively investigated in theoretical studies. Exploiting density functional theory and tight-binding calculation, we investigate the impacts of in…
Bilayer graphene (two coupled graphitic monolayers arranged according to Bernal stacking) is a two-dimensional gapless semiconductor with a peculiar electronic spectrum different from the Dirac spectrum in the monolayer material. In particular, the electronic Fermi line in each of its valleys has a strong p -> -p asymmetry due to a trigonal warping, which suppresses the weak localization effect. We show that weak localisation in bilayer graphene may be present only in devices with pronounced intervalley scattering, and we evaluate the corresponding magnetoresistance.
We show that the valley Chern number of the low energy band in twisted double bilayer graphene can be tuned through two successive topological transitions, where the direct bandgap closes, by changing the electric field perpendicular to the plane of the graphene layers. The two transitions with Chern number changes of -3 and +1 can be explained by the formation of three satellite Dirac points around the central Dirac cone in the moiré Brillouin zone due to the presence of trigonal warping. The satellite cones have opposite chirality to the central Dirac cone. Considering the overlap of the ban…
We present a mainly analytical study of the entanglement spectrum of Bernal-stacked graphene bilayers in the presence of trigonal warping in the energy spectrum. Upon tracing out one layer, the entanglement spectrum shows qualitative geometric differences to the energy spectrum of a graphene monolayer. However, topological quantities such as Berry phase type contributions to Chern numbers agree. The latter analysis involves not only the eigenvalues of the entanglement Hamiltonian but also its eigenvectors. We also discuss the entanglement spectra resulting from tracing out other sublattices. A…
Bilayer silicene has richer physical properties than bilayer graphene due to its buckled structure together with its trigonal symmetric structure. The buckled structure arises from a large ionic radius of silicon, and the trigonal symmetry from a particular way of hopping between two silicenes. It is a topologically trivial insulator since it carries a trivial $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$ topological charge. Nevertheless, its physical properties are more akin to those of a topological insulator than those of a band insulator. Indeed, a bilayer silicene nanoribbon has edge modes which are almost gapless an…
We investigate the fine structure in the energy spectrum of bilayer graphene in the presence of various stacking defaults, such as a translational or rotational mismatch. This fine structure consists of four Dirac points that move away from their original positions as a consequence of the mismatch and eventually merge in various manners. The different types of merging are described in terms of topological invariants (winding numbers) that determine the Landau-level spectrum in the presence of a magnetic field as well as the degeneracy of the levels. The Landau-level spectrum is, within a wide …
The existence of strong trigonal warping around the K point for the low energy electronic states in multilayer (N$\geq$2) graphene films and graphite is well established. It is responsible for phenomena such as Lifshitz transitions and anisotropic ballistic transport. The absolute orientation of the trigonal warping with respect to the center of the Brillouin zone is however not agreed upon. Here, we use quasiparticle scattering experiments on a gated bilayer graphene/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructure to settle this disagreement. We compare Fourier transforms of scattering interference m…
Using the transfer matrix in the angular-momentum space we investigate the impact of trigonal warping on magnetotransport and scaling properties of a ballistic bilayer graphene in the Corbino geometry. Although the conductivity at the charge-neutrality point and zero magnetic field exhibits a one-parameter scaling, the shot-noise characteristics, quantified by the Fano factor $\mathcal{F}$ and the third charge-transfer cumulant $\mathcal{R}$, remain pseudodiffusive. This shows that the pseudodiffusive transport regime in bilayer graphene is not related to the universal value of the conductivit…
Optical Hall conductivity, as directly related to Faraday rotation, is theoretically studied for bilayer and trilayer graphene. In bilayer graphene, the trigonal warping of the band dispersion greatly affects the resonance structures in Faraday rotation not only in the low-energy region where small Dirac cones emerge, but also in the higher-energy parabolic bands as a sequence of satellite resonances. In ABA-stacked trilayer, the resonance spectrum is a superposition of effective monolayer and bilayer contributions with band gaps, while ABC trilayer exhibits a distinct spectrum peculiar to the…
Transport measurements through a few-electron circular quantum dot in bilayer graphene display bunching of the conductance resonances in groups of four, eight and twelve. This is in accordance with the spin and valley degeneracies in bilayer graphene and an additional threefold 'minivalley degeneracy' caused by trigonal warping. For small electron numbers, implying a small dot size and a small displacement field, a two-dimensional s- and then a p-shell are successively filled with four and eight electrons, respectively. For electron numbers larger than twelve, as the dot size and the displacem…
Fermi line of bilayer graphene at zero energy is transformed into four separated points positioned trigonally at the corner of the hexagonal first Brillouin zone. We show that as a result of this trigonal splitting the minimal conductivity of an undoped bilayer graphene strip becomes anisotropic with respect to the orientation $θ$ of the connected electrodes and finds a dependence on its length $L$ on the characteristic scale $\ell=π/Δk\simeq 50 nm$ determined by the inverse of k-space distance of two Dirac points. The minimum conductivity increases from a universal isotropic value $σ^{min}_{\…
This is a numerical study of thermoelectric properties of ballistic bilayer graphene in the presence of trigonal warping term in the effective Hamiltonian. We find, in the mesoscopic samples of the length $L>10\,μ$m at sub-Kelvin temperatures, that both the Seebeck coefficient and the Lorentz number show anomalies (the additional maximum and minimum, respectively) when the electrochemical potential is close to the Lifshitz energy, which can be attributed to the presence of the van Hove singularity in a bulk density of states. At higher temperatures the anomalies vanish, but measurable quantiti…
Resolving low-energy features in the density of states (DOS) holds the key to understanding wide variety of rich novel phenomena in graphene based 2D heterostructures. Lifshitz transition in bilayer graphene (BLG) arising from trigonal warping has been established theoretically and experimentally. Nevertheless, the experimental realization of its effects on the transport properties has been challenging because of its relatively low energy scale ($\sim 1$ meV). In this work, we demonstrate that the thermoelectric power (TEP) can be used as an effective probe to investigate fine changes in the D…
In van der Waals multilayers of triangular lattice, trigonal warping occurs universally due to the interlayer hopping. We theoretically investigate the effect of trigonal warping upon distinctive topological phases, like the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) and the quantum valley Hall effect (QVHE). Taking Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene as an example, we find that the trigonal warping plays a crucial role in the formation of QAHE in large exchange field and/or interlayer potential difference by inducing extra band inversion points at momentum further away from high symmetric point. The pr…
We show that the twisted graphene bilayer can reveal unusual topological properties at low energies, as a consequence of a Dirac-point splitting. These features rely on a symmetry analysis of the electron hopping between the two layers of graphene and we derive a simplified effective low-energy Hamiltonian which captures the essential topological properties of twisted bilayer graphene. The corresponding Landau levels peculiarly reveal a degenerate zero-energy mode which cannot be lifted by strong magnetic fields.
We study the electronic band structure of monolayer graphene when Rashba spin-orbit coupling is present. We show that if the Rashba spin-orbit coupling is stronger than the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling, the low energy bands undergo trigonal-warping deformation and that for energies smaller than the Lifshitz energy, the Fermi circle breaks up into separate parts. The effect is very similar to what happens in bilayer graphene at low energies. We discuss the possible experimental implications, such as threefold increase of the minimal conductivity for low electron densities, the wavenumber depen…
The zero-energy Landau level of bilayer graphene is shown to be anomalously sharp (delta-function like) against bond disorder as long as the disorder is correlated over a few lattice constants.The robustness of the zero-mode anomaly can be attributed to the preserved chiral symmetry. Unexpectedly, even when we apply a finite potential difference (i.e., an electric field) between the top and the bottom layers, the valley-split $n=0$ Landau levels remain anomalously sharp although they are now shifted away from the zero energy, while the $n=1$ Landau levels exhibit the usual behavior.
In minimally twisted bilayer graphene, a moir{é} pattern consisting of AB and BA stacking regions separated by domain walls forms. These domain walls are predicted to support counterpropogating topologically protected helical (TPH) edge states when the AB and BA regions are gapped. We fabricate designer moir{é} crystals with wavelengths longer than 50 nm and demonstrate the emergence of TPH states on the domain wall network by scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements. We observe a double-line profile of the TPH states on the domain walls, only occurring when the AB and BA regions are gappe…
We perform an analytical study of the energy and entanglement spectrum of non-interacting fermionic bilayer honeycomb lattices in the presence of trigonal warping in the energy spectrum, on-site energy difference and uniform magnetic field. Employing single particle correlation functions, we present an explicit form for layer-layer entanglement Hamiltonian whose spectrum is entanglement spectrum. We demonstrate that in the absence of trigonal warping, at zero on-site energy difference exact correspondence is established between entanglement spectrum and energy spectrum of monolayer which means…
We investigate the semiclassical electronic transport properties of the bilayer silicene-like system in the presence of charged impurity. The trigonal warping due to the interlayer hopping, and its effect to the band structure of bilayer silicene is discussed. Besides the trigonal warping, the external field also gives rise to the anisotropic effect of the mobility (at finite temperature) which can be explored by the Boltzmann theory. The dynamical polarization as well as the scattering wave vector-dependent screening within random phase approximation are very important in determining the scat…
We propose an implementation of a valley selective electronic Veselago lens in bilayer graphene. We demonstrate that in the presence of an appropriately oriented potential step, low-energy electrons radiating from a point source can be re-focused coherently within the same band. The phenomenon is due to the trigonal warping of the band structure that leads to a negative refraction index. We show that the interference pattern can be controlled by an external mechanical strain.
We describe the weak localization correction to conductivity in ultra-thin graphene films, taking into account disorder scattering and the influence of trigonal warping of the Fermi surface. A possible manifestation of the chiral nature of electrons in the localization properties is hampered by trigonal warping, resulting in a suppression of the weak anti-localization effect in monolayer graphene and of weak localization in bilayer graphene. Intervalley scattering due to atomically sharp scatterers in a realistic graphene sheet or by edges in a narrow wire tends to restore weak localization re…
Recent experiments [L. Ju et al., Nature, 2015, 520, 650] confirm the existence of gapless states at domain walls created in gated bilayer graphene, when the sublattice stacking is changed from AB to BA. These states are significant because they are topologically protected, valley-polarized and give rise to conductance along the domain wall. Current theoretical models predict the appearance of such states only at domain walls, which preserve the sublattice order. Here we show that the appearance of the topologically protected states in stacking domain walls can be much more common in bilayer g…
We calculate the spin relaxation time of mobile electrons due to spin precession between random impurity scattering (D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism) in electrically gated bilayer graphene analytically and numerically. Due to the trigonal warping of the bandstructure, the spin relaxation time exhibits an interesting non-monotonic behavior as a function of both the Fermi energy and the interlayer bias potential. Our results are in good agreement with recent four-probe measurements of the spin relaxation time in bilayer graphene and indicate the possibility of an electrically-switched spin device.
We investigate the electronic confinement in bilayer graphene by topological loops of different shapes. These loops are created by lateral gates acting via gap inversion on the two graphene sheets. For large-area loops the spectrum is well described by a quantization rule depending only on the loop perimeter. For small sizes, the spectrum depends on the loop shape. We find that zero-energy states exhibit a characteristic pattern that strongly depends on the spatial symmetry. We show this by considering loops of higher to lower symmetry (circle, square, rectangle and irregular polygon). Interes…
We use an exact analytical technique [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{101}, 115405 (2020), Phys. Rev. B \textbf{102}, 165117 (2020)] to recover the surface Green's functions for Bernal (ABA) and rhombohedral (ABC) graphite. For rhombohedral graphite we recover the predicted surface flat bands. For Bernal graphite we find that the surface state spectral function is similar to the bilayer one, but the trigonal warping effects are enhanced, and the surface quasiparticles have a much shorter lifetime. We subsequently use the T-matrix formalism to study the quasiparticle interference patterns generated on the…
We present measurements of quantized conductance in electrostatically induced quantum point contacts in bilayer graphene. The application of a perpendicular magnetic field leads to an intricate pattern of lifted and restored degeneracies with increasing field: at zero magnetic field the degeneracy of quantized one-dimensional subbands is four, because of a twofold spin and a twofold valley degeneracy. By switching on the magnetic field, the valley degeneracy is lifted. Due to the Berry curvature states from different valleys split linearly in magnetic field. In the quantum Hall regime fourfold…
We report on the effects of laser illumination on the electronic properties of bilayer graphene. By using Floquet theory combined with Green's functions we unveil the appeareance of laser-induced gaps not only at integer multiples of $\hbar Ω/2$ but also at the Dirac point with features which are shown to depend strongly on the laser polarization. Trigonal warping corrections are shown to lead to important corrections for radiation in the THz range, reducing the size of the dynamical gaps. Furthermore, our analysis of the topological properties at low energies reveals that when irradiated with…
We study the renormalization of the effective mass and trigonal warping of bilayer graphene by the electron-electron interaction. One consequence of such a renormalization in the low-energy bands of a bilayer crystal consists of a small reduction of the critical density of the Lifshitz transition (the crossover between the single-pocket and four-pocket topology of the Fermi surface).
We study the static and dynamic screening of gapped bilayer graphene. Unlike previous works we use the 4-band model instead of the simplified 2-band model. We find that there are important qualitative differences between the dielectric screening function obtained using the 2-band and that obtained using the 4-band model. In particular within the 4-band model in the presence of a band-gap the static screening exhibits Kohn anomalies that are absent within the 2-band model. Moreover, using the 4-band model, we are able to examine the effect of trigonal warping (absent in the 2-band model) on the…
We study the exciton condensate in zero temperature limit in a special class of electron-hole bilayer systems adjacent to insulating ferromagnetic films. With the self-consistent mean-field approximation, we find that the Rashba spin-orbit interaction in the electron and hole layers can induce the p \pm ip or p pairing states depending on the different magnetization of the overlapped ferromagnetic films. Correspondingly, the topologically nontrivial or trivial phases emerge. Furthermore, in the topologically nontrivial phase, the quasiparticle excitations of the U(1) vortex are attached to fra…
Graphite, a model (semi)metal with trigonally warped bands, is investigated with magneto-absorption experiment and viewed as an electronic system in the vicinity of the Lifshitz transition. A characteristic pattern of up to twenty cyclotron resonance harmonics has been observed. This large number of resonances, their relative strengths and characteristic shapes trace the universal properties of the electronic states near a separatrix in the momentum space. Quantum-mechanical perturbative methods with respect to the trigonal warping term hardly describe the data which are, on the other hand, fa…
We study the phase diagram of the inverted InAs/GaSb bilayer quantum wells. For small tunneling amplitude between the layers, we find that the system is prone to formation of an s-wave exciton condensate phase, where the spin-structure of the order parameter is uniquely determined by the small spin-orbit coupling arising from the bulk inversion asymmetry. The phase is topologically trivial and does not support edge transport. On the contrary, for large tunneling amplitude, we obtain a topologically non-trivial quantum spin Hall insulator phase with a p-wave exciton order parameter, which enhan…
Graphene has evolved as a platform for quantum transport that can compete with the best and cleanest semiconductor systems. Recently, many interesting local properties of carrier transport in graphene have been investigated by various scanning probe techniques. Here, we report on the observation of distinct electronic jets emanating from a narrow split-gate defined channel in bilayer graphene. We find that these jets, which are visible via their interference patterns, occur predominantly with an angle of 60° between each other. This observation is related to the specific bandstructure of bilay…
Quantum transport measurements including the Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak (AAS) and Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effects, universal conductance fluctuations (UCF), and weak anti-localization (WAL) have been carried out on epitaxial Bi thin films ($10-70$ bilayers) on Si(111). The results show that while the film interior is insulating all six surfaces of the Bi thin films are robustly metallic. We propose that these properties are the manifestation of a novel phenomenon, namely, a topologically trivial bulk system can become topologically non-trivial when it is made into a thin film. We stress that what's ob…
We study the ballistic conductivity of bilayer graphene in the presence of symmetry-breaking terms in effective Hamiltonian for low-energy excitations, such as the trigonal-warping term ($γ_3$), the electron-hole symmetry breaking interlayer hopping ($γ_4$), and the staggered potential ($δ_{AB}$). Earlier, it was shown that for $γ_3\neq{}0$, in the absence of remaining symmetry-breaking terms (i.e., $γ_4=δ_{AB}=0$), the conductivity ($σ$) approaches the value of $3σ_0$ for the system size $L\rightarrow{}\infty$ (with $σ_0=8e^2/(πh)$ being the result in the absence of trigonal warping, $γ_3=0$)…
Graphene, as an atomic-thick ultrasoft membrane, almost has no resistance against out-of-plane deformations and, therefore, it is always wrinkled to a certain degree. Recently, corrugated structures and their effects on the electronic properties of monolayer graphene have been studied extensively. However, similar experimental studies in bilayer graphene have yet to be reported. Here, we show that corrugations in bilayer graphene can generate incommensurate stacking solitons (domain walls) between commensurate Bernal-stacked domains. By using scanning tunneling microscopy, we microscopically s…
The electronic band structure of ABC-stacked multilayer graphene is studied within an effective mass approximation. The electron and hole bands touching at zero energy support chiral quasiparticles characterized by Berry's phase N pi for N-layers, generalizing the low-energy band structure of monolayer and bilayer graphene. We investigate the trigonal-warping deformation of the energy bands and show that the Lifshitz transition, in which the Fermi circle breaks up into separate parts at low energy, reflects Berry's phase N pi. It is particularly prominent in trilayers, N=3, with the Fermi circ…
We demonstrate that single layer graphene exhibits the electronic structure of a bilayer when it is connected to two gated bilayers. The energy gap characteristic for gated bilayer is induced in the single layer and it persists for distances separating the bilayers up to 20 nm. Most importantly, we report on the appearance of topologically protected gapless state localized in a single graphene layer when the distant bilayers differ in the stacking order. The one-dimensional current in the topological state flows in a single layer graphene, and this finding suggests a new exploitation of graphe…
We model the magnetic ratchet effect in bilayer graphene in which a dc electric current is produced by an ac electric field of frequency $ω$ in the presence of a steady in-plane magnetic field and inversion-symmetry breaking. In bilayer graphene, the ratchet effect is tunable by an external metallic gate which breaks inversion symmetry. For zero in-plane magnetic field, we show that trigonal warping and inversion-symmetry breaking are able to produce a large dc valley current, but not a non-zero total dc charge current. For the magnetic ratchet in a tilted magnetic field, the perpendicular fie…
The low-temperature phase diagram of multilayer graphene heterostructures is largely defined by the exchange-driven instability that lifts the four-fold isospin degeneracy. Such instability gives rise to the quarter- and half-metal phases, which are key to our understanding of other emergent phenomena. Recent theoretical works shed light on a new type of Coulomb-driven instability. It is proposed that the exchange interaction between trigonal-warping-induced Fermi pockets could induce charge carriers to condense into one of the Fermi pockets, giving rise to a net polarization in the momentum s…
