Tracing out Correlated Chern Insulators in Magic Angle Twisted Bilayer Graphene

TL;DR

This study uses advanced STM techniques to map and identify topological phases in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene under magnetic fields, revealing six correlation-driven topological phases and their dependence on twist angle and interactions.

Contribution

Introduces novel STM-based methods to directly visualize and assign Chern numbers to topological phases in MATBG, uncovering their microscopic origins and sensitivity to twist angle.

Findings

Six topological phases identified at integer fillings in finite magnetic fields.

Topological phases emerge from symmetry-breaking transitions driven by electron correlations.

Interaction effects significantly modify the Landau spectrum and induce large splitting of zero Landau levels.

Abstract

Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) exhibits a range of correlated phenomena that originate from strong electron-electron interactions. These interactions make the Fermi surface highly susceptible to reconstruction when $ \pm 1, \pm 2, \pm 3$ electrons occupy each moir\' e unit cell and lead to the formation of correlated insulating, superconducting and ferromagnetic phases. While some phases have been shown to carry a non-zero Chern number, the local microscopic properties and topological character of many other phases remain elusive. Here we introduce a set of novel techniques hinging on scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to map out topological phases in MATBG that emerge in finite magnetic field. By following the evolution of the local density of states (LDOS) at the Fermi level with electrostatic doping and magnetic field, we visualize a local Landau fan diagram that enables us to directly assign Chern numbers to all observed phases. We uncover the existence of six topological phases emanating from integer fillings in finite fields and whose origin relates to a cascade of symmetry-breaking transitions driven by correlations. The spatially resolved and electron-density-tuned LDOS maps further reveal that these topological phases can form only in a small range of twist angles around the magic-angle value. Both the microscopic origin and extreme sensitivity to twist angle differentiate these topological phases from the Landau levels observed near charge neutrality. Moreover, we observe that even the charge-neutrality Landau spectrum taken at low fields is considerably modified by interactions and exhibits an unexpected splitting between zero Landau levels that can be as large as ${\sim }\,3-5$ meV. Our results show how strong electronic interactions affect the band structure of MATBG and lead to the formation of correlation-enabled topological phases.