Magic angle and plasmon mode engineering in twisted trilayer graphene with pressure

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that applying pressure to twisted trilayer graphene can induce flat bands at larger twist angles, enabling tunable plasmonic modes and electronic correlations without precise twist angle control.

Contribution

It introduces a pressure-based method to achieve flat bands and magic angles in tTLG, expanding the tunability of correlated electronic states and plasmonic properties.

Findings

Pressure can induce flat bands at larger twist angles in tTLG.

Critical pressure for magic angle formation is about half of that in twisted bilayer graphene.

Two distinct plasmon modes are observed in flat band tTLG, with different behaviors.

Abstract

Recent experimental and theoretical investigations demonstrate that twisted trilayer graphene (tTLG) is a highly tunable platform to study the correlated insulating states, ferromagnetism, and superconducting properties. Here we explore the possibility of tuning electronic correlations of the tTLG via a vertical pressure. A full tight-binding model is used to accurately describe the pressure-dependent interlayer interactions. Our results show that pressure can push a relatively larger twist angle (for instance, $1.89^{\circ}$) tTLG to reach the flat-band regime. Next, we obtain the relationship between the pressure-induced magic angle value and the critical pressure. These critical pressure values are almost half of that needed in the case of twisted bilayer graphene. Then, plasmonic properties are further investigated in the flat band tTLG with both zero-pressure magic angle and pressure-induced magic angle. Two plasmonic modes are detected in these two kinds of flat band samples. By comparison, one is a high energy damping-free plasmon mode that shows similar behavior, and the other is a low energy plasmon mode (flat-band plasmon) that shows obvious differences. The flat-band plasmon is contributed by both interband and intraband transitions of flat bands, and its divergence is due to the various shape of the flat bands in tTLG with zero-pressure and pressure-induced magic angles. This may provide an efficient way of tuning between regimes with strong and weak electronic interactions in one sample and overcoming the technical requirement of precise control of the twist angle in the study of correlated physics.