Hofstadter butterfly and the quantum Hall effect in twisted double bilayer graphenes

Abstract

We study the energy spectrum and quantum Hall effects of the twisted double bilayer graphene in uniform magnetic field. We investigate two different arrangements, AB-AB and AB-BA, which differ in the relative orientation but have very similar band structures in the absence of a magnetic field. For each system, we calculate the energy spectrum and quantized Hall conductivities at each spectral gap by using a continuum Hamiltonian that satisfies the magneto-translation condition. We show that the Hofstadter butterfly spectra of AB-AB and AB-BA stackings differ significantly, even though their zero magnetic field band structures closely resemble; the spectrum of AB-AB has valley degeneracy, which can be lifted by applying interlayer potential asymmetry, while the spectrum of AB-BA has no such degeneracy in any case. We explain the origin of the difference from the perspectives of lattice symmetry and band topology.