Published January 15, 2024 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Correlated phases in spin-orbit-coupled rhombohedral trilayer graphene

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

Recent experiments indicate that crystalline graphene multilayers exhibit much of the richness of their twisted counterparts, including cascades of symmetry-broken states and unconventional superconductivity. Interfacing Bernal bilayer graphene with a WSe₂ monolayer was shown to dramatically enhance superconductivity—suggesting that proximity-induced spin-orbit coupling plays a key role in promoting Cooper pairing. Motivated by this observation, we study the phase diagram of spin-orbit-coupled rhombohedral trilayer graphene via self-consistent Hartree-Fock simulations, elucidating the interplay between displacement field effects, long-range Coulomb repulsion, short-range (Hund's) interactions, and substrate-induced Ising spin-orbit coupling. In addition to generalized Stoner ferromagnets, we find various flavors of intervalley coherent ground states distinguished by their transformation properties under electronic time reversal, C₃ rotations, and an effective antiunitary symmetry. We pay particular attention to broken-symmetry phases that yield Fermi surfaces compatible with zero-momentum Cooper pairing, identifying promising candidate orders that may support spin-orbit-enhanced superconductivity.

Copyright and License

© 2024 American Physical Society.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Yiran Zhang, Alex Thomson, Cyprian Lewandowski, and Stevan Nadj-Perge for insightful discussions and collaborations on related projects. J.M.K. acknowledges support from the SURF programme at Caltech. É.L.-H. was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS Initiative, Grant No. GBMF8682. The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Quantum Science Center supported the high-performance computing as well as the symmetry analysis component of this work. Additional support was provided by the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant No. GBMF1250, and the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech.

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Additional details

Identifiers

ISSN
2469-9969

Funding

California Institute of Technology
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
GBMF8682
United States Department of Energy
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
GBMF1250
California Institute of Technology
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
National Science Foundation

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Institute for Quantum Information and Matter