Emulating Heavy Fermions in Twisted Trilayer Graphene

Creating heavy fermions by just using graphene

22 March 2022

Heavy fermions — a promising quantum state for use in topological quantum computers — have been produced in three layers of graphene.

A heavy fermion is a particle belonging to the same family of particles as the electron that acts as if it has much more mass than it actually has. It could form the basis of future topological quantum computers that are particularly stable against random errors that beset other forms of quantum computers. So far, heavy fermions have been produced only in certain rare-earth compounds, but they often contain radioactive elements.

Now, a physicist from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland and a collaborator have shown that heavy fermions can be created in three layers of graphene that are twisted relative to each other.

This demonstration opens up the possibility of investigating heavy-fermion physics in a purely carbon-based system.

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References

1. Physical Review Letters 127, 026401 (2021). doi: 10.1103/physrevlett.127.026401