Orbital mixing in few-layer graphene and non-Abelian Berry phase

Abstract

In a magnetic field few-layer graphene supports, at the lowest Landau level, a multiplet of zero-mode levels nearly degenerate in orbitals as well as in spins and valleys. Those pseudo-zero-mode (PZM) levels are generally sensitive to interactions and external perturbations, and have a crossing among themselves or with other higher Landau levels when an external field is swept over a certain range. A close study is made of how such PZM levels evolve when they are gradually brought from empty to filled levels under many-body interactions. It is pointed out that the level spectra generally avoid a crossing via orbital level mixing and that orbital mixing is governed by a non-Abelian Berry phase that derives from an approximate degeneracy and interactions. A look is also taken into evolution/crossing of many-body ground states with increasing external bias in bilayer graphene.