Spontaneous broken-symmetry insulator and metals in tetralayer rhombohedral graphene.

Abstract

Interactions among charge carriers in graphene can lead to the spontaneous breaking of multiple degeneracies. When increasing the number of graphene layers following rhombohedral stacking, the dominant role of Coulomb interactions becomes pronounced due to the significant reduction in kinetic energy. In this study, we employ phonon-polariton-assisted near-field infrared imaging to determine the stacking orders of tetralayer graphene devices. Through quantum transport measurements, we observe a range of spontaneous broken-symmetry states and their transitions, which can be finely tuned by carrier density n and electric displacement field D. Specifically, we observe a layer-antiferromagnetic insulator at n = D = 0 with a gap of approximately 15 meV. Increasing D allows for a continuous phase transition from a layer-antiferromagnetic insulator to a layer-polarized insulator. By simultaneously tuning n and D, we observe isospin-polarized metals, including spin-valley-polarized and spin-polarized metals. These transitions are associated with changes in the Fermi surface topology and are consistent with the Stoner criteria. Our findings highlight the efficient fabrication of specially stacked multilayer graphene devices and demonstrate that crystalline multilayer graphene is an ideal platform for investigating a wide range of broken symmetries driven by Coulomb interactions.