Inducing Berry Curvature Dipole in Multilayer Graphene through Inhomogeneous Interlayer Sliding

Abstract: Breaking lattice symmetry is crucial for generating a nonzero Berry curvature. While manipulating twisting angles between adjacent layers has successfully broken lattice symmetry through strain field and generated nonzero Berry curvature, interlayer sliding in principle offers a promising alternative route. However, realizing uniform interlayer sliding faces experimental challenges due to its energetic instability. In this work, we introduce an experimentally feasible method, using a corrugated substrate to induce an inhomogeneous but energetically more stable interlayer sliding in multilayer graphene. Our simulations demonstrate that inhomogeneous interlayer sliding produces a sizable Berry curvature dipole, which can be further tuned by varying the interlayer sliding distances and potential differences. The resulting Berry curvature dipole magnitude is remarkably up to 100 times greater than the maximum displacement involved in the inhomogeneous sliding. Our results highlight inhomogeneous interlayer sliding as a viable and effective method to induce a significant Berry curvature dipole in graphene systems and propose the experimentally feasible way to realize it.