Kekulé spiral order from strained topological heavy fermions
The ground state of twisted bilayer graphene across much of its phase diagram is now understood to be the incommensurate Kekul\'e spiral (IKS). Using parent-state wavefunctions in the strained topological heavy-fermion model, the authors demonstrate here that the energetic stability of this state can be understood from ${C}_{2}$\ensuremath{\mathcal{T}}-protected non-Abelian Dirac node braiding. This gives a topological interpretation to the energetic favorability of the IKS.
Authors
- Dumitru Călugăru (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5897-9878)
- Haoyu Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3787-6634)
- Oskar Vafek (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7561-9287)
- B. Andrei Bernevig
- Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4993-3381)
- Jian Kang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8995-5636)
- Jiabin Yu
- Nicolas Regnault
Institutions
- Florida State University (US)
- Princeton University (US)
- ShanghaiTech University (CN)
- University of Florida (US)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (US)
- Flatiron Health (United States) (US)
- Flatiron Institute (US)
- Donostia International Physics Center (ES)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical review. B./Physical review. B
- Published
- 2025-08-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/rr5g-3js8
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Topological Materials and Phenomena
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.74