Coulomb screening of superconductivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates Coulomb screening effects in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, providing evidence supporting an unconventional pairing mechanism for superconductivity by showing how carrier density in one layer can suppress superconductivity in the adjacent layer.

Contribution

It introduces a double-layer system to study Coulomb screening effects, offering new insights into the pairing mechanism in twisted bilayer graphene.

Findings

Screening in one layer suppresses superconductivity in the adjacent layer.

Supports the hypothesis of an unconventional pairing mechanism.

Highlights the importance of Coulomb interactions in these systems.

Abstract

The origin of superconductivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene has been a subject of intense debate. While some experimental evidence indicated an unconventional pairing mechanism, efforts to tune the critical temperature by screening the Coulomb interactions have been unsuccessful, possibly indicating a conventional phonon-mediated pairing. Here we study a double-layer electronic system consisting of two twisted graphene bilayers in immediate proximity of each other but remaining electronically decoupled. By increasing the carrier density in one bilayer, we completely suppressed both the superconductivity and the correlated-insulator state in the adjacent magic-angle graphene. The observation of such a screening effect offers strong support for an unconventional mechanism of Cooper pairing in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, shedding new light on the underlying physics governing their properties.