Chiral superfluid states in hybrid graphene heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper explores chiral superfluid states in a hybrid graphene heterostructure composed of single-layer and bilayer graphene separated by hBN, revealing degenerate, topologically distinct superfluid states with potential for protected midgap states.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the chirality difference in electrons induces N-fold degenerate chiral superfluid states, a novel finding in graphene heterostructures.

Findings

Identification of N-fold degenerate chiral superfluid states.

Discovery of topologically distinct superfluid states.

Potential realization of protected midgap states.

Abstract

The use of high quality hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) as a dielectric material has made possible the realization of graphene devices with very high mobility. In addition hBN can be made as thin as few atomic layers and, as recently demonstrated experimentally, can be used to isolate electrically two graphene layers only few nanometers apart. The combined use of graphene and hBN has therefore opened the possibility to create novel electronic structures. In this work we study the "hybrid" heterostructure formed by one sheet of single layer graphene (SLG) and one sheet of bilayer graphene (BLG) separated by a thin film of hBN. In general it is expected that interlayer interactions can drive the system to a spontaneously broken symmetry state characterized by interlayer phase coherence. The peculiarity of the SLG-BLG heterostructure is that the electrons in the layers (SLG and BLG) have different chiralities. We find that the difference of chirality between electrons in the two layers causes the spontaneously broken symmetry state to be N-fold degenerate. Moreover, we find that some of the degenerate states are chiral superfluid states, topologically distinct from the usual layer-ferromagnetism. The chiral nature of the ground state opens the possibility to realize protected midgap states. The N-fold degeneracy of the ground state makes the physics of SLG-BLG hybrid systems analogous to the physics of helium-3, in particular given the recent discovery of chiral superfluid states in this system.