Electronic properties of twisted trilayer graphene

Abstract

We study the electronic properties of a twisted trilayer graphene, where two of the layers have Bernal stacking and the third one has a relative rotation with respect to the AB-stacked layers. Near the Dirac point, the AB-twisted trilayer graphene spectrum shows two parabolic Bernal-like bands and a twistedlike Dirac cone. For small twist angles, the parabolic bands present a gap that increases for decreasing rotation angle. There is also a shift in the twistedlike Dirac cone with a similar angle dependence. We correlate the gap in the trilayer with the shift of the Dirac cone in an isolated twisted bilayer, which is due to the loss of electron-hole symmetry caused by sublattice mixing in the rotated geometry. Using a tight-binding and a continuum model, we derive an effective Hamiltonian which accounts for the relevant low-energy properties of this system.