Magnetic ordering in moiré graphene multilayers from a continuum Hartree+ U approach

Journal article

Recently, symmetry-broken ground states, such as correlated insulating states, magnetic order and superconductivity, have been discovered in twisted bilayer graphene (tBLG) and twisted trilayer graphene (tTLG) near the so-called magic angles. Understanding the magnetic order in these systems is challenging, however, as atomistic methods become extremely expensive near the magic angle and continuum approaches fail to capture important atomistic details. In this work, we develop an approach to incorporate short-ranged Hubbard interactions self-consistently in a continuum model. In addition, we include long-ranged Coulomb interactions which are known to be important when doping the flat bands of tBLG and tTLG. Therefore, for the first time, magnetic order in moiré graphene multilayers is self-consistently explored in a continuum model with atomistic detail. With this approach, we perform a systematic analysis of the magnetic phase diagram of tBLG as a function of doping level and twist angle, near the magic angle. Our results are consistent with previous perturbative atomistic Hartree+U calculations. Furthermore, we investigated magnetic order of tTLG, which were found to be similar to those in tBLG. In the future, the developed continuum model can be utilized to investigate magnetic ordering tendencies from short-range exchange interactions in other moiré graphene multilayers as a function of doping, twist angle, screening environment, among other variables.

Authors: Cheung, CTS; Vitale, V; Klebl, L; Fischer, A; Kennes, DM

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: Nanotechnology
• Volume: 37
• Issue: 3
• Article number: 035001
• Publication date: 2026-01-19
• Acceptance date: 2025-12-16
• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ae2d5e
• EISSN: 1361-6528
• ISSN: 0957-4484
• Language: English
• Keywords: continuum; atomistic; twisted bilayer graphene; magnetism