Quarter-Metal Phases in Multilayer Graphene: Ising-XY and Annular Lifshitz Transitions

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive mean-field phase diagram of the quarter-metal in multilayer graphene, revealing phase transitions and principles that deepen understanding of its magnetic and electronic properties.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed phase diagram of the quarter-metal in rhombohedral trilayer graphene, identifying phase transitions and their relation to experimental parameters and spin-orbit coupling.

Findings

Identified annular Lifshitz and Ising-XY phase transitions.

Mapped phase boundaries on experimental phase diagram.

Estimated in-plane spin susceptibility of the quarter-metal.

Abstract

Recent experiments have uncovered a distinctive magnetic metal in lightly-doped multilayer graphene, coined the \textit{quarter metal}. This quarter metal consolidates all the doped carriers, originally distributed evenly across the four (or twelve) Fermi surfaces of the paramagnetic state, into one expansive Fermi surface by breaking time-reversal and/or inversion symmetry. In this work, we map out a comprehensive mean-field phase diagram of the quarter-metal in rhombohedral trilayer graphene within the four dimensional parameter space spanned by the density $n_e$, interlayer electric potential $U$, external magnetic field parallel to the two-dimensional material plane $B_{\parallel}$ and Kane-Mele spin-orbit coupling $\lambda$. We found an annular Lifshitz phase transition and a Ising-XY phase transition and locate these phase boundaries on the experimental phase diagram. The movement of the Ising-XY phase boundary offers insights into $\lambda$. Our analysis reveals that it moves along the line $\partial n_e/\partial B_{\parallel} \sim -0.5\times 10^{11} \text{cm}^{-2}\text{T}^{-1}$ within the $n_e$-$B_{\parallel}$ parameter space when $\lambda=30\mu$eV. Additionally, we estimated the in-plane spin susceptibility of the valley-Ising quarter-metal $\chi_{_\parallel}\sim 8~\mu\text{eV} ~\text{T}^{-2}$. Beyond these quantitative findings, two general principles emerge from our study: 1) The valley-XY quarter metal's dominance in the $n_e-U$ parameter space grows with an increasing number of layers due to the reduce valley polarization variations within the Fermi sea. 2) Layer polarization near the band edge plays an important role in aiding the re-entrance of the paramagnetic state at low density. The insights derived from the quarter metal physics may shed light on the complex behaviors observed in other regions of the phase diagram.