Published July 14, 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Quantum phase diagram and non-Abelian Moore-Read state in double twisted bilayer graphene

  • 1. ROR icon California State University, Northridge
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

Experimental realizations of Abelian fractional Chern insulators have demonstrated the potentials of moiré systems in synthesizing exotic quantum phases. Remarkably, a twisted multilayer graphene system may also host non-Abelian states competing with charge density waves under Coulomb interactions. Here, through larger-scale exact diagonalization simulations, we map out the quantum phase diagram for a 𝜈=1/2 system with electrons occupying the lower moiré band of a double twisted bilayer graphene. By increasing the system size, we find the ground state has sixfold near degeneracy and with a finite spectral gap separating the ground states from the excited states across a broad range of parameters. Further computation of many-body Chern numbers establish the topological order of the state, and we rule out the possibility of charge density wave orders based on a featureless density structure factor. Furthermore, we inspect the particle-cut entanglement spectrum to identify the topological state as a non-Abelian Moore-Read state. Combining all the above evidence, we conclude that the Moore-Read ground state dominates the quantum phase diagram for a double twisted bilayer graphene system for a broad range of coupling strengths with realistic Coulomb interactions.

Copyright and License

©2025 American Physical Society.

Acknowledgement

S.N. thanks Hui Liu for helpful discussions about the construction of the continuum model and computation of PES. This work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant No. PHY-2216774. The numerical simulation is partially supported by NSF instrument Grant No. DMR-2406524.

Supplemental Material

In Supplemental Materials (SM), we provide information for
finite-sized clusters used in computation, and show complementary analysis to support the Moore-Read ground state, including static structure factors as well as results on other clusters. We also provide energy spectrum of Moore-Read states
realized in top (t1) band.

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2412.02128 (arXiv)
Is supplemented by
Supplemental Material: https://journals.aps.org/prb/supplemental/10.1103/q4p7-39xx/SM.pdf (URL)

Funding

National Science Foundation
PHY-2216774
National Science Foundation
DMR-2406524

Dates

Accepted
2025-06-30

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published