Creating Magnetic Fields in excess of 1000 T by Misoriented Stacking in a Graphene Bilayer

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that misoriented stacking in graphene bilayers can generate effective in-plane pseudo-magnetic fields exceeding 1000 T, enabling control over electronic properties through structural manipulation.

Contribution

It reveals that stacking misorientation in graphene bilayers mimics extremely large in-plane pseudo-magnetic fields and alters pseudospin textures, offering new ways to manipulate electronic properties.

Findings

Misorientation induces pseudo-magnetic fields >1000 T.

Stacking misorientation modifies pseudospin textures.

Electronic properties can be controlled via twisting or in-plane fields.

Abstract

It is well established that some kinds of lattice deformations in graphene monolayer, which change electron hopping in sublattice and affect in-plane motion of electrons, may induce out-of-plane pseudo-magnetic fields as large as 100 T. Here, we demonstrate that stacking misorientation in graphene bilayers mimics the effect of huge in-plane pseudo-magnetic fields greater than 1000 T on the interlayer hopping of electrons. As well as addressing the similarity between the effect of in-plane pseudo-magnetic fields and twisting on the electronic band structure of Bernal graphene bilayer, we point out that in-plane magnetic fields (or twisting) could modify the low-energy pseudospin texture of the graphene bilayer (the pseudospin winding number is reduced from 2 to 1), thereby changing the chiralities of quasiparticles from that of spin 1 to spin 1/2. Our results illustrate the possibility of controllably manipulating electronic properties of Bernal graphene bilayer by introducing the in-plane magnetic field or twisting.