Linking thermodynamic correlation signatures and superconductivity in twisted trilayer graphene
ORAL
Abstract
Twisted graphene multilayers exhibit strong electronic correlations, which manifest in a range of experimental signatures. Yet how these signatures relate to each other and the microscopic ground states---and how twist angle and band structure reshape them---remains poorly understood. Here we study this interplay by correlating local thermodynamic and transport measurements in a twisted trilayer graphene (TTG) sample with unequal angles and flat electronic bands. We use a scanning single-electron transistor to map the impact of electron-electron interactions in a region of the sample where the local twist angle evolves smoothly. We observe gapped correlated insulators and a ``sawtooth'' in electronic compressibility, both exhibiting pronounced electron-hole ($e$-$h$) asymmetry with distinct ``magic" angles for conduction and valence bands. Subsequent transport measurements in the same region reveal robust superconductivity with a similar $e$-$h$ asymmetry. Our measurements indicate that superconductivity is not directly tied to the correlated insulators. Instead, its critical temperature correlates closely with the strength of the sawtooth in compressibility, suggesting a common origin or link between the two. By combining a local probe with transport measurements, we uncover connections between superconductivity and thermodynamic correlation signatures that are not apparent from either technique in isolation, highlighting the power of our dual approach and establishing their dependence on interlayer twist angles in TTG.
*Measurements were supported by the QSQM Energy Frontier Research Center, U.S. DOE Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Awards DE-SC0021238 and DE-AC02-76SF00515), and NSF (DMR-2237050). K.W. and T.T. acknowledge JSPS KAKENHI (21H05233, 23H02052), CREST (JPMJCR24A5), JST, and WPI-MEXT, Japan. J.C.H. was supported by the Stanford Q-FARM Fellowship. Measurement infrastructure was funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's EPiQS Initiative (GBMF9460). Part of this work was performed at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities, supported by the NSF (ECCS-2026822).
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Publication:Linking thermodynamic correlation signatures and superconductivity in twisted trilayer graphene Jesse C. Hoke, Yifan Li, Yuwen Hu, Julian May-Mann, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Trithep Devakul, Aaron Sharpe, Benjamin E. Feldman arXiv:2509.03583
Presenters
Aaron Layne Sharpe
Stanford University
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Authors
Aaron Layne Sharpe
Stanford University
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Jesse C Hoke
HRL Laboratories, LLC
Yifan Li
Stanford University
Yuwen Hu
Stanford University
Julian May-Mann
Stanford University
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