Stacking-induced Chern insulator

Abstract

Graphene can be turned into a semimetal with broken time-reversal symmetry by adding a valley-dependent pseudo-scalar potential that shifts the Dirac point energies in opposite directions, as in the modified Haldane model. We consider a bilayer obtained by stacking two time-reversed copies of the modified Haldane model, where conduction and valence bands cross to give rise to a nodal line in each valleys. In the AB stacking, the interlayer hopping lifts the degeneracy of the nodal lines and induces a band repulsion, leading surprisingly to a chiral insulator with a Chern number $C=\pm2$. As a consequence a pair of chiral edge states appears at the boundaries of the ribbon bilayer geometry. In contrast, the AA stacking does not show nontrivial topological phases. We discuss possible experimental implementations of our results.