Optical and plasmonic properties of twisted bilayer graphene: Impact of interlayer tunneling asymmetry and ground-state charge inhomogeneity

TL;DR

This theoretical study investigates how interlayer tunneling asymmetry and charge inhomogeneity affect the optical, plasmonic, and thermoelectric properties of twisted bilayer graphene across various conditions.

Contribution

It systematically analyzes the impact of intra-sublattice tunneling and charge inhomogeneity on TBG's properties, filling gaps in previous literature.

Findings

Optical conductivity at neutrality is sensitive to tunneling and twist angle.

Charge inhomogeneity significantly affects intra-band optical responses away from neutrality.

Plasmon spectra and thermoelectric coefficients are notably influenced by the studied effects.

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of the local optical conductivity, plasmon spectra, and thermoelectric properties of twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) at different filling factors and twist angles $\theta$. Our calculations are based on the electronic band structures obtained from a continuum model that has two tunable parameters, $u_0$ and $u_1$, which parametrize the intra-sublattice inter-layer and inter-sublattice inter-layer tunneling rate, respectively. In this Article we focus on two key aspects: i) we study the dependence of our results on the value of $u_0$, exploring the whole range $0\leq u_0\leq u_1$; ii) we take into account effects arising from the intrinsic charge density inhomogeneity present in TBG, by calculating the band structures within the self-consistent Hartree approximation. At zero filling factor, i.e. at the charge neutrality point, the optical conductivity is quite sensitive to the value of $u_0$ and twist angle, whereas the charge inhomogeneity brings about only modest corrections. On the other hand, away from zero filling, static screening dominates and the optical conductivity is appreciably affected by the charge inhomogeneity, the largest effects being seen on the intra-band contribution to it. These findings are also reflected by the plasmonic spectra. We compare our results with existing ones in the literature, where effects i) and ii) above have not been studied systematically. As natural byproducts of our calculations, we obtain the Drude weight and Seebeck coefficient. The former displays an enhanced particle-hole asymmetry stemming from the inhomogeneous ground-state charge distribution. The latter is shown to display a broad sign-changing feature even at low temperatures ($\approx 5~{\rm K}$) due to the reduced slope of the bands, as compared to those of single-layer graphene.