Orbital and interlayer Skyrmions crystals in bilayer graphene

R. Cote, Wenchen Luo, Branko Petrov, Yafis Barlas, A. H. MacDonald

Published 2010-10-02Version 1

A graphene bilayer in a transverse magnetic field has a set of Landau levels with energies $E=\pm \sqrt{N(N+1)}\hslash \omega_{c}^{\ast}$ where $\omega_{c}^{\ast}$ is the effective cyclotron frequency and $% N=0,1,2,...$ All Landau levels but N=0 are four times degenerate counting spin and valley degrees of freedom. The Landau level N=0 has an extra degeneracy due to the fact that orbitals $n=0$ and $n=1$ both have zero kinetic energies. At integer filling factors, Coulomb interactions produce a set of broken-symmetry states with partial or full alignement in space of the valley and orbital pseudospins. These quantum Hall pseudo-ferromagnetic states support topological charged excitations in the form of orbital and valley Skyrmions. Away from integer fillings, these topological excitations can condense to form a rich variety of Skyrme crystals with interesting properties. We study in this paper different crystal phases that occur when an electric field is applied between the layers. We show that orbital Skyrmions, in analogy with spin Skyrmions, have a texture of electrical dipoles that can be controlled by an in-plane electric field. Moreover, the modulation of electronic density in the crystalline phases are experimentally accessible through a measurement of their local density of states