Electronic properties of slid bilayer graphene: effective models in low energy range

A generic tight-binding model for 2 p z electrons in bilayer graphene (BLG) systems is used to derive the expression of effective Hamiltonians for low-energy states around the K-points of hexagonal Brillouin zone. The obtained effective Hamiltonians are validated for two kinds of AA-like and AB-like slid bilayer graphene (SBG). It is shown that, for the former case, the electronic structure is characterized by a gauge vector field which couples to the sliding vector to deform the band structure of the AA-stacked configuration as a perturbation. For the latter case, since the A–B interlayer coupling is the most dominant, it allows separating the energy bands and lowering the 4 × 4 Hamiltonian into a 2 × 2 effective model. A gauge vector field also appears, but different from the AA-like SBGs, it plays the role similar to an in-plane magnetic field. Graphical abstract