We implement a self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation based on a microscopic model in real space, which allows us to consider the interplay between the Hubbard and the extended Coulomb interaction in twisted bilayer graphene at the magic angle. These two interactions tend to favor different symmetry breaking patterns, having therefore complementary roles in the regimes where one or the other dominates. We show that, for sufficiently large values of the on-site Hubbard repulsion, magic angle graphene has an antiferromagnetic ground state at the charge neutrality point, while at half-filling of the lowest valence band the state becomes fully spin-polarized. In general, a suitable screening of the extended Coulomb interaction is required to observe the magnetic state in either case, as otherwise the instabilities take place in the charge sector, preferentially in the form of time-reversal, chiral or valley symmetry breaking.
Using a combination of quantum Monte Carlo simulations, functional renormalization group calculations and mean-field theory, we study the Hubbard model on the Bernal-stacked honeycomb bilayer at half-filling as a model system for bilayer graphene. The free bands consisting of two Fermi points with quadratic dispersions lead to a finite density of states at the Fermi level, which triggers an antiferromagnetic instability that spontaneously breaks sublattice and spin rotational symmetry once local Coulomb repulsions are introduced. Our results reveal an inhomogeneous participation of the spin mo…
We analyze competition between different ordered states in bilayer graphene (BLG). Combining arguments based on SU(4) spin-valley flavor symmetry with a mean field analysis, we identify the lowest energy state with the anomalous Hall insulator (AHI). This state is an SU(4) singlet excitonic insulator with broken time reversal symmetry, exhibiting quantized Hall effect in the absence of external magnetic field. Applied electric field drives an Ising-type phase transition, restoring time reversal symmetry. Applied magnetic field drives a transition from the AHI state to a quantum Hall ferromagne…
We report the nanoscale imaging of Ti-doped bilayer calcium ruthenates during the Mott metal-insulator transition by microwave impedance microscopy. Different from a typical first-order phase transition where coexistence of the two terminal phases takes place, a new metallic stripe phase oriented along the in-plane crystalline axes emerges inside both the G-type antiferromagnetic insulating state and paramagnetic metallic state. The effect of this electronic state can be observed in macroscopic measurements, allowing us to construct a phase diagram that takes into account the energetically com…
We study the fractional quantum Hall effect in the central Landau level of bilayer graphene. By tuning the external applied magnetic field and the electric bias between the two layers one can access a regime where there is a degeneracy between Landau levels with orbital characters corresponding to N=0 and N=1 Galilean Landau levels. While the Laughlin state is generically the ground state for filling $ν=1/3$ we find that it can be destroyed and replaced by a Wigner crystal at the same filling factor by tuning the bias and applied field. This competition does not take place at $ν=2/3$ where the…
We use a perturbative renormalization group approach with short-range continuum model interactions to analyze the competition between isotropic gapped and anisotropic gapless ordered states in bilayer graphene, commenting specifically on the role of exchange and on the importance of spin and valley flavor degeneracy. By comparing the divergences of the corresponding susceptibilities, we conclude that this approach predicts gapped states for flavor numbers N=1,2,4. We also comment briefly on the related gapped states expected in chiral (ABC) trilayer graphene.
We present a theoretical study of single-particle and many-body properties of twisted bilayer WSe$_2$. For single-particle physics, we calculate the band topological phase diagram and electron local density of states (LDOS), which are found to be correlated. By comparing our theoretical LDOS with those measured by scanning tunneling microscopy, we comment on the possible topological nature of the first moiré valence band. For many-body physics, we construct a generalized Hubbard model on a triangular lattice based on the calculated single-particle moiré bands. We show that a layer potential di…
Gated heterostructures containing bilayer graphene with staggered sublattice potentials are investigated by tight binding model with Rashba spin-orbital coupling and Hubbard interaction. The topological phase diagrams depend on the combinations of substrates and the Hubbard interaction. The presence of the staggered sublattice potential favor the topological phase transition with small Rashba spin-orbital coupling strength. The presence of the Hubbard interaction modified the topological phase boundaries, increasing the minimal spin-orbital coupling strength for topological phase transition. A…
We study the phase diagram of an effective model of competing nematic and antiferromagnetic orders of interacting electrons on the Bernal-stacked honeycomb bilayer, as relevant for bilayer graphene. In the noninteracting limit, the model features a semimetallic ground state with quadratic band touching points at the Fermi level. Taking the effects of short-range interactions into account, we demonstrate the existence of an extended region in the mean-field phase diagram characterized by coexisting nematic and antiferromagnetic orders. By means of a renormalization group approach, we reveal tha…
We analyze the phase diagram of the Bilayer graphene (BLG) at zero temperature and doping. Assuming that at the high energies the electronic system of BLG can be described within a weak coupling theory (consistent with the experimental evidence), we systematically study the evolution of the couplings with going from high to low energies. The divergences of the couplings at some energies indicates the tendency towards certain symmetry breakings. Carrying out this program, we found that the phase diagram is determined by microscopic couplings defined on the short distances (initial conditions). …
We develop an effective extended Hubbard model to describe the low-energy electronic properties of the twisted bilayer graphene. By using the Bloch states in the effective continuum model and with the aid of the maximally localized algorithm, we construct the Wannier orbitals and obtain an effective tight-binding model on the emergent honeycomb lattice. We found the Wannier state takes a peculiar three-peak form in which the amplitude maxima are located at the triangle corners surrounding the center. We estimate the direct Coulomb interaction and the exchange interaction between the Wannier st…
Because of its large density-of-states and the 2π Berry phase near its low-energy band-contact points, neutral bilayer graphene (BLG) at zero magnetic field (B) is susceptible to chiral-symmetry breaking, leading to a variety of gapped spontaneous quantum Hall states distinguished by valley and spin-dependent quantized Hall conductivities. Among these, the layer antiferromagnetic state, which has quantum valley Hall (QVH) effects of opposite sign for opposite spins, appears to be the thermodynamic ground state. Though other gapped states have not been observed experimentally at B=0, they can b…
Flat band moiré superlattices have recently emerged as unique platforms for investigating the interplay between strong electronic correlations, nontrivial band topology, and multiple isospin 'flavor' symmetries. Twisted monolayer-bilayer graphene (tMBG) is an especially rich system owing to its low crystal symmetry and the tunability of its bandwidth and topology with an external electric field. Here, we find that orbital magnetism is abundant within the correlated phase diagram of tMBG, giving rise to the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in correlated metallic states nearby most odd integer fillin…
The competing ground states of bilayer graphene are studied by applying renormalization group techniques to a bilayer honeycomb lattice with nearest neighbor hopping. In the absence of interactions, the Fermi surface of this model at half-filling consists of two nodal points with momenta $\mathbf{K}$, $\mathbf{K}'$, where the conduction band and valence band touch each other, yielding a semi-metal. Since near these two points the energy dispersion is quadratic with perfect particle-hole symmetry, excitonic instabilities are inevitable if inter-band interactions are present. Using a perturbativ…
Performing a leading-order renormalization group analysis, here we compute the effects of generic local or short-range electronic interactions in monolayer and Bernal bilayer graphene. Respectively in these two systems chiral quasiparticles display linear and biquadratic band touching, leading to linearly vanishing and constant DOS. Consequently, the former system remains stable for weak enough local interactions, and supports a variety of ordered phases only beyond a critical strength of interactions. By contrast, ordered phases can nucleate for sufficiently weak interactions in bilayer graph…
We revisit the effect of local interactions on the quadratic band touching (QBT) of Bernal stacked bilayer graphene models using renormalization group (RG) arguments and quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the Hubbard model. We present an RG argument which predicts, contrary to previous studies, that weak interactions do not flow to strong coupling even if the free dispersion has a QBT. Instead they generate a linear term in the dispersion, which causes the interactions to flow back to weak coupling. Consistent with this RG scenario, in unbiased quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the Hubbard mo…
Motivated by recent experiments [H. Zhou, \emph{et al.}, Science {\bf 375}, 774 (2022) and S. C. de la Barrera, \emph{et al.}, arXiv:2110.13907], here we propose a general mechanism for valley and/or spin degeneracy lifting of the electronic bands in doped Bernal bilayer graphene, subject to electric displacement ($D$) fields. A $D$-field induced layer polarization (LP), when accompanied by Hubbard repulsion driven layer antiferromagnet (LAF) and next-nearest-neighbor repulsion driven quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) orders, lifts the four-fold degeneracy of electronic bands, yielding a quarter me…
In mean-field-theory bilayer graphene's massive Dirac fermion model has a family of broken inversion symmetry ground states with charge gaps and flavor dependent spontaneous inter layer charge transfers. We use a lattice Hartree-Fock model to explore some of the physics which controls whether or not this type of broken symmetry state, which can be viewed as a pseudospin ferromagnet, occurs in nature. We find that inversion symmetry is still broken in the lattice model and estimate that transferred areal densities are $\sim 10^{-5}$ electrons per carbon atom, that the associated energy gaps are…
We study the edge magnetization of bilayer graphene ribbons with zigzag edges. The presence of flat edge-state bands at the Fermi energy of undoped bilayer, which gives rise to a strong peak in the density of states, makes bilayer ribbons magnetic at the edges even for very small on-site electronic repulsion. Working with the Hubbard model in the Hartree Fock approximation we show that the magnetic structure in bilayer ribbons with zigzag edges is ferromagnetic along the edge, involving sites of the two layers, and antiferromagnetic between opposite edges. It is also shown that this magnetic s…
The discovery of magic angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) has unveiled a rich variety of superconducting, magnetic and topologically nontrivial phases. The existence of all these phases in one material, and their tunability, has opened new pathways for the creation of unusual gate tunable junctions. However, the required conditions for their creation - gate induced transitions between phases in zero magnetic field - have so far not been achieved. Here, we report on the first experimental demonstration of a device that is both a zero-field Chern insulator and a superconductor. The Chern ins…
Candidates for correlated topological insulators, originated from the spin-orbit coupling as well as Hubbard type correlation, are expected in the ($111$) bilayer of perovskite-structural transition-metal oxides. Based on the first-principles calculation and tight-binding model, the electronic structure of a LaMnO$_3$ ($111$) bilayer sandwiched in LaScO$_3$ barriers has been investigated. For the ideal undistorted perovskite structure, the Fermi energy of LaMnO$_3$ ($111$) bilayer just stays at the Dirac point, rendering a semi-metal (graphene-like) which is also a half-metal (different from g…
Owing to comparably strong spin-orbit coupling and Hubbard interaction, iridium based 227 pyrochlore oxides harbor a rich confluence of competing magnetic orders and emergent multipolar Weyl quasiparticles. Here we show that this family of materials is predominantly susceptible toward the nucleation of electronic noncoplanar all-in all-out (AIAO) and three-in one-out (3I1O) orders, respectively transforming under the singlet $A_{2u}$ and triplet $T_{1u}$ representations, supporting octupolar and dipolar Weyl fermions, and favored by strong on-site Hubbard and nearest-neighbor ferromagnetic int…
The recently observed superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene emerges from insulating states believed to arise from electronic correlations. While there have been many proposals to explain the insulating behaviour, the commensurability at which these states appear suggests that they are Mott insulators. Here we focus on the insulating states with $\pm 2$ electrons or holes with respect to the charge neutrality point. We show that the theoretical expectations for the Mott insulating states are not compatible with the experimentally observed dependence on temperature and magnetic field if,…
In this paper, we derive lattice models for the narrow moiré bands of the AB-stacked twisted WSe$_2$ homobilayer through continuum model and Wannier orbital construction. Previous work has shown that an approximate SU(4) Hubbard model may be realized by combining spin and layer because inter-layer tunneling is suppressed due to spin $S_z$ conservation. However, Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) was ignored in the previous analysis. Here, we show that a Rashba SOC of reasonable magnitude can induce a finite but very small inter-layer hopping in the final lattice Hubbard model. At total filling $…
Charge neutral bilayer graphene has a gapped ground state as transport experiments demonstrate. One of the plausible such ground states is layered antiferromagnetic spin density wave (LAF) state, where the spins in top and bottom layers have same magnitude with opposite directions. We propose that lightly charged bilayer graphene in an electric field perpendicular to the graphene plane may be a half metal as a consequence of the inversion and particle-hole symmetry broken in the LAF state. We show this explicitly by using a mean field theory on a 2-layer Hubbard model for the bilayer graphene.
The $E = 0$ octet of bilayer graphene in the filling factor range of -4 < $ν$ < 4 is a fertile playground for many-body phenomena, yet a Landau level diagram is missing due to strong interactions and competing quantum degrees of freedom. We combine measurements and modeling to construct an empirical and quantitative spectrum. The single-particle-like diagram incorporates interaction effects effectively and provides a unified framework to understand the occupation sequence, gap energies and phase transitions observed in the octet. It serves as a new starting point for more sophisticated calcula…
We study the interaction energy between two graphene nanoribbons by first principles calculations, including van der Waals interactions and spin polarization. For ultranarrow zigzag nanoribbons, the direct stacking is even more stable than Bernal, competing in energy for wider ribbons. This behavior is due to the magnetic interaction between edge states. We relate the reduction of the magnetization in zigzag nanoribbons with increasing ribbon width to the structural changes produced by the magnetic interaction, and show that when deposited on a substrate, zigzag bilayer ribbons remain magnetic…
We provide numerical evidence for composite fermion pairing in quantum Hall bilayer systems at filling $ν=1/2 + 1/2$ for intermediate spacing between the layers. We identify the phase as $p_x + i p_y$ pairing, and construct high accuracy trial wavefunctions to describe the groundstate on the sphere. For large distances between the layers, and for finite systems, a competing "Hund's rule" state, or composite fermion liquid, prevails for certain system sizes. We argue that for larger systems, the pairing phase will persist to larger layer spacing.
We derive an effective Bose-Hubbard model that predicts a phase transition from Bose-Einstein condensate to Mott insulator in two different systems subject to applied periodic potentials: microcavity exciton-polaritons and indirect excitons. Starting from a microscopic Hamiltonian of electrons and holes, we derive an effective Bose-Hubbard model for both systems and evaluate the on-site Coulomb interaction U and hopping transition amplitudes t. Experimental parameters required for observing a phase transition between a Bose-Einstein condensate and a Mott insulator are discussed. Our results su…
We consider the excitonic effects on the thermal properties in the AB-stacked bilayer graphene. The calculations are based on the bilayer generalization of the usual Hubbard model at the half-filling. The full interaction bandwidth is used without any low-energy assumption. We obtain the unusually high values for the electronic figure of merit even at the room-temperatures which is very promising for the thermoelectric applications of the AB-bilayer structure. We discuss the effects of the interlayer Coulomb interaction and temperature on different thermal parameters in the bilayer graphene an…
Inter-layer excitonic coherence in a quantum Hall bilayer with negligible tunneling is monitored by measurements of low-lying spin excitations. At $ν_T =1$ new quasiparticle excitations are observed above a transition temperature revealing a competing metallic phase. For magnetic fields above an onset Zeeman energy this metallic phase has full spin polarization. A phase diagram in the parameter space of temperature and Zeeman energy reveals that the transition temperature increases at higher fields. This unexpected result suggests intriguing impacts of spin polarization in the highly correlate…
Gapless bilayer graphene is susceptible to a variety of spontaneously gapped states. As predicted by theory and observed by experiment, the ground state is however topologically trivial, because a valley-independent gap is energetically favorable. Here, we show that under the application of interlayer electric field and circularly polarized light, one valley can be selected to exhibit the original interaction instability while the other is frozen out. Tuning this Floquet system stabilizes multiple competing topological ordered states, distinguishable by edge transport and circular dichroism. N…
