Fractal Butterflies of Chiral Fermions in Bilayer Graphene: Phase Transitions and Emergent Properties

Abstract

We report on our studies of fractal butterflies in biased bilayer graphene in the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) regime. We have considered the case when the external periodic potential is present in one layer and have illustrated the effect of varying both the periodic potential strength and the bias voltage on the FQHE and the butterfly energy gaps. Interestingly, the butterfly spectra exhibits remarkable phase transitions between the FQHE gap and the butterfly gap for chiral electrons in bilayer graphene, by varying either the periodic potential strength or the bias voltage. We also find that, in addition to those phase transitions, by varying the bias voltage one can essentially control the periodic potential strength experienced by the electrons.