Topological Floquet Engineering of Twisted Bilayer Graphene

Abstract: We investigate the topological properties of Floquet-engineered twisted bilayer graphene above the magic angle driven by circularly polarized laser pulses. Employing a full Moir\'e-unit-cell tight-binding Hamiltonian based on first-principles electronic structure we show that the band topology in the bilayer, at twisting angles above 1.05$^\circ$, essentially corresponds to the one of single-layer graphene. However, the ability to open topologically trivial gaps in this system by a bias voltage between the layers enables the full topological phase diagram to be explored, which is not possible in single-layer graphene. Circularly polarized light induces a transition to a topologically nontrivial Floquet band structure with the Berry curvature of a Chern insulator. Importantly, the twisting allows for tuning electronic energy scales, which implies that the electronic bandwidth can be tailored to match realistic driving frequencies in the ultraviolet or mid-infrared photon-energy regimes. This implies that Moir\'e superlattices are an ideal playground for combining twistronics, Floquet engineering, and strongly interacting regimes out of thermal equilibrium.