- Letter
Giant nonlinear Hall effect in strained twisted bilayer graphene
Phys. Rev. B 106, L041111 – Published 18 July, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.L041111
Abstract
Recent studies have shown that moiré flat bands in twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) can acquire nontrivial Berry curvatures when aligned with a hexagonal boron nitride substrate, which can be manifested as a correlated Chern insulator near the 3/4 filling. In this Letter, we show that the large Berry curvatures in the moiré bands lead to a strong nonlinear Hall (NLH) effect in strained TBG with general filling factors. Under a weak uniaxial strain , the Berry curvature dipole which characterizes the nonlinear Hall response can be as large as , exceeding the values of previously known nonlinear Hall materials by two orders of magnitude. The dependence of the giant NLH effect as a function of electric gating, strain, and twist angle is further investigated systematically. Importantly, we point out that the giant NLH effect appears generically for a twist angle near the magic angle due to the strong susceptibility of nearly flat moiré bands to symmetry breaking induced by strains, which can even induce a topological band inversion. Our results establish TBG as a promising platform for investigating nonlinear effects such as the NLH effect, the nonlinear Nernst effect, and the nonlinear thermal Hall effect due to its giant Berry curvature dipole.