journal article·2025-12-24Open access

Gate-Tunable Orbital Magnetism and Competing Superconductivity in Twisted Trilayer Graphene Josephson Junctions

Vishal Bhardwaj, Lekshmi Rajagopal, Lorenzo Arici, Matan Bocarsly, Alexey Ilin, Gal Shavit, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Yuval Oreg, Tobias Holder, Yuval Ronen

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces· Volume 17· Issue 51

Abstract

Twisted trilayer graphene (TTG) provides a tunable moiré platform to study correlated phases emerging from flat-band physics. Here, we investigate the interplay between superconductivity and spontaneous orbital magnetism (OM) in alternating TTG devices with intermediate twist angles (1.38-1.44°). Using electrostatically defined Josephson junctions, we demonstrate that OM, stabilized near the charge neutrality point (CNP), competes with gate-induced superconductivity. The OM phase is characterized by sharp jumps in Hall resistance, current-induced bistability, and a Curie-Bloch temperature dependence, indicating broken time-reversal symmetry. Additionally, nonreciprocal Josephson transport─manifested as asymmetric Fraunhofer patterns and a superconducting diode effect─provides independent evidence of an orbital magnetic state confined to the weak link. The observed critical temperature hierarchy, where superconductivity dominates over OM at higher carrier densities and displacement fields, reveals a tunable competition between two broken-symmetry ground states. Our findings establish alternating TTG Josephson devices as a minimal and versatile platform to probe the coexistence of magnetism and superconductivity in engineered moiré systems.
Source: openalex_inverted_index · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Topological Materials and Phenomena · Graphene research and applications · 2D Materials and Applications

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Department of Condensed Matter Physics

Weizmann Institute of Science

Department of Physics and Institute for Quantum Information and Matter

California Institute of Technology

Research Center for Functional Materials

National Institute for Materials Science

International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics

School of Physics and Astronomy

Tel Aviv University

Funding

Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung · Minerva Foundation · H2020 European Research Council · Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Foundation

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