Theory for constructing effective electronic models of bilayer graphene systems

Abstract

We present and discuss practical techniques for formulating effective models to describe the low-energy electronic properties of bilayer graphene systems. We show that such effective models are constructed from a collection of appropriate single-layer Bloch states of two graphene layers. In general, the obtained effective models allow the construction of a so-called moiré band structure. However, it is not the result of an irreducible representation of a translation symmetry group of the bilayer lattices except for the commensurate bilayer configurations. We also point out that the commensurate bilayer configurations are classified into three categories depending on the divisibility of the difference between two commensurate integer indices by 3. The electronic band structure of three lattice configurations, one for each category, is shown. Especially by combining with a real-space calculation, we validate the working ability of constructed effective models for generic bilayer graphene systems by showing that the effects of interlayer sliding are diminished by twisting. This result is consistent with the invariance of effective models under the interlayer sliding operation.