Large-area, periodic, and tunable intrinsic pseudo-magnetic fields in low-angle twisted bilayer graphene

Abstract: A properly strained graphene monolayer or bilayer is expected to harbour periodic pseudo-magnetic fields with high symmetry, yet to date, a convincing demonstration of such pseudo-magnetic fields has been lacking, especially for bilayer graphene. Here, we report the first definitive experimental proof for the existence of large-area, periodic pseudo-magnetic fields, as manifested by vortex lattices in commensurability with the moir\'e patterns of low-angle twisted bilayer graphene. The pseudo-magnetic fields are strong enough to confine the massive Dirac electrons into circularly localized pseudo-Landau levels, as observed by scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy, and also corroborated by tight-binding calculations. We further demonstrate that the geometry, amplitude, and periodicity of the pseudo-magnetic field can be fine-tuned by both the rotation angle and heterostrain applied to the system. Collectively, the present study substantially enriches twisted bilayer graphene as a powerful enabling platform for exploration of new and exotic physical phenomena, including quantum valley Hall effects and quantum anomalous Hall effects.