Resolving spectral gaps and many-body resonances in superconducting twisted trilayer graphene

ORAL  · Invited

Abstract

Previous studies on magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG) have reported the coexistence of symmetry-broken phases and robust superconductivity. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) further revealed a pseudogap that largely overlaps with the Kekulé reconstruction. Here, we perform STS measurements on twist-angle homogeneous MATTG sample tracking the formation sequence of correlated phases. First, we identify many-body resonance at intermediate temperatures resulting from the dynamic correlation between heavy and light fermions in MATTG. Upon further cooling, real-space dI/dV maps develop Kekulé reconstruction accompanied by the appearance of a pseudogap. At much lower temperatures, we observe a separate superconducting gap, indicating the pseudogap is more closely associated with a flavor-symmetry-broken phase. The emergence of a superconducting gap within the IVC-originated pseudogap highlights the interplay between dynamic correlations and symmetry breaking in driving superconductivity in MATTG.

*This work has been primarily supported by the Office of Naval Research (grant no. N142112635) and in part by the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, a National Science Foundation Physics Frontiers Center (PHY-2317110) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, (grant DOI: 10.37807/GBMF12967). H.K. acknowledges support from the Kwanjeong fellowship.

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Publication: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17200

Presenters

  • Hyunjin Kim

    • Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter
    • Cornell

Authors

  • Hyunjin Kim

    • Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter
    • Cornell

  • Gautam Rai

    • University of Hamburg

  • Lorenzo Crippa

    • Julius-Maximilians University of Wuerzburg
    • University of Hamburg

  • Dumitru Calugaru

    • Oxford University
    • University of Oxford

  • Haoyu Hu

    • Princeton University

  • Youngjoon Choi

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Lingyuan Kong

    • Caltech

  • Eli Nathaniel Baum

    • Caltech

  • Yiran Zhang

    • Harvard University
    • Harvard

  • Ludwig Holleis

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Kenji Watanabe

    • National Institute for Materials Science
    • Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute of Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan

  • Takashi Taniguchi

    • National Institute for Materials Science
    • Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science
    • International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute of Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
    • Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute of Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan

  • Andrea F Young

    • University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Andrei B Bernevig

    • Princeton University
    • Department of Physics, Princeton University

  • Roser Valenti

    • Goethe University Frankfurt

  • Giorgio Sangiovanni

    • Julius-Maximilians University of Wuerzburg

  • Tim O Wehling

    • University of Hamburg

  • Stevan Nadj-Perge

    • Caltech