Bilayer graphene under pressure: Electron-hole Symmetry Breaking, Valley Hall Effect, and Landau Levels

TL;DR

This paper investigates how pressure affects bilayer graphene's electronic properties, revealing electron-hole symmetry breaking, valley Hall effect, and modifications in Landau levels through theoretical modeling and DFT calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a low energy Hamiltonian capturing pressure-induced changes in bilayer graphene's electronic structure and measurable phenomena.

Findings

Pressure enhances trigonal warping and splits bands into four Dirac cones.

Electron-hole symmetry is broken as cones separate in energy and momentum.

Berry curvature differences lead to observable valley Hall effects.

Abstract

The electronic structure of bilayer graphene under pressure develops very interesting features with an enhancement of the trigonal warping and a splitting of the parabolic touching bands at the K point of the reciprocal space into four Dirac cones, one at K and three along the T symmetry lines. As pressure is increased, these cones separate in reciprocal space and in energy, breaking the electron-hole symmetry. Due to their energy separation, their opposite Berry curvature can be observed in valley Hall effect experiments and in the structure of the Landau levels. Based on the electronic structure obtained by Density Functional Theory, we develop a low energy Hamiltonian that describes the effects of pressure on measurable quantities such as the Hall conductivity and the Landau levels of the system.