Chirality Sum Rule in Graphene Multilayers

ORAL

Abstract

We show that the low energy electronic structure of arbitrarily stacked graphene multilayers with nearest-neighbor interlayer tunneling consists solely of chiral pseudospin doublets. Although the number of doublets in an $N$-layer system depends on the stacking sequence, the pseudospin chirality sum is always $N$. It follows that $N$-layer stacks always have $N$ distinct Landau levels at $E=0$ for each spin and valley, and that the quantized Hall conductivity $\sigma_{xy} = \pm(4 e^2/h)(N/2+n)$ where $n$ is a non-negative integer.

*This work was supported by the Welch Foundation, by NSF-NRI SWAN, and by the National Science Foundation under grant DMR-0606489.

Authors

  • Hongki Min

    • University of Texas at Austin
    • Department of Physics, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
    • The University of Texas at Austin
  • Allan MacDonald

    • University of Texas at Austin
    • University of Texas
    • Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Texas at Austin
    • Department of Physics, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
    • Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin Texas 78712
    • The University of Texas at Austin
    • Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin