Physical properties of an Aperiodic monotile: Graphene-like features, chirality and zero-modes

Abstract

The discovery of the Hat, an aperiodic monotile, has revealed novel mathematical aspects of aperiodic tilings. However, the physics of particles propagating in such a setting remains unexplored. In this work we study spectral and transport properties of a tight-binding model defined on the Hat. We find that (i) the spectral function displays striking similarities to that of graphene, including six-fold symmetry and Dirac-like features; (ii) unlike graphene, the monotile spectral function is chiral, differing for its two enantiomers; (iii) the spectrum has a macroscopic number of degenerate states at zero energy; (iv) when the magnetic flux per plaquette ($\phi$) is half of the flux quantum, zero-modes are found localized around the reflected `anti-hats'; and (v) its Hofstadter spectrum is periodic in $\phi$, unlike for other quasicrystals. Our work serves as a basis to study wave and electron propagation in possible experimental realizations of the Hat, which we suggest.