Giant Shift Current in Electrically-Tunable Superlattice Bilayer Graphene

ORAL

Abstract

The recent introduction of superlattice potentials has opened new avenues for engineering tunable electronic band structures featuring topologically nontrivial moiré-like bands. Here we consider optoelectronic properties of Bernal-stacked graphene subjected to a superlattice potential either electrostatically or through lattice twisting to show that it exhibits a giant shift current response that is orders of magnitude larger than existing predictions in twisted mulitlayer systems. Effects of a gate voltage, and the strength and phase of the superlattice potential on the shift current are delineated systematically across various topological regimes.  Our study gives insight into the nature of nonlinear responses of materials and how these responses could be optimized by tuning the superlattice potential. 

*Work of N.A., M.M., B.G. and A.B. was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-20-1-0322 and benefited from the resources of Northeastern University's Advanced Scientific Computation Center, the Discovery Cluster, the Quantum Materials and Sensing Institute, and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative award MTC-22032.  G.A.F. acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation through DMR-2114825 and additional support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. S.C acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI (No. JP23H04865), MEXT, Japan.

Publication: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09465

Presenters

  • Nabil Ahmed Atlam

    • Northeastern University

Authors

  • Nabil Ahmed Atlam

    • Northeastern University
  • Swati Chaudhary

    • The Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8581, Japan
    • The University of Tokyo
    • ISSP, University of Tokyo
    • University of Tokyo
  • Arpit Raj

    • NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
  • Matthew Matzelle

    • Northeastern, QMSI
  • Barun Ghosh

    • Department of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics S. N. Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Kolkata-700106, India
    • Northeastern University
  • Gregory A Fiete

    • Northeastern University
  • Arun Bansil

    • Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
    • Northeastern University