Theory of correlated insulating behaviour and spin-triplet superconductivity in twisted double bilayer graphene

Abstract

Two graphene monolayers twisted by a small magic angle exhibit nearly flat bands, leading to correlated electronic states. Here we study a related but different system with reduced symmetry - twisted double bilayer graphene (TDBG), consisting of two Bernal stacked bilayer graphenes, twisted with respect to one another. Unlike the monolayer case, we show that isolated flat bands only appear on application of a vertical displacement field. We construct a phase diagram as a function of twist angle and displacement field, incorporating interactions via a Hartree-Fock approximation. At half-filling, ferromagnetic insulators are stabilized with valley Chern number Cv= ± 2. Upon doping, ferromagnetic fluctuations are argued to lead to spin-triplet superconductivity from pairing between opposite valleys. We highlight a novel orbital effect arising from in-plane fields plays an important role in interpreting experiments. Combined with recent experimental findings, our results establish TDBG as a tunable platform to realize rare phases in conventional solids.