Giant High-order Nonlinear and Nonreciprocal Electrical Transports Induced by Valley Flipping in Bernal Bilayer Graphene

Abstract

We investigate the electrical transport properties of the mini-valley polarized state proposed recently in slightly doped Bernal Bilayer Graphene (BLG) in large electric displacement fields. By minimizing the Hartree-Fock energy functional, we first confirm the appearance of mini-valley polarized phase. At the low carrier doping regime, the 1-pocket state will be stabilized where only one of the trigonal-wrapping-induced Fermi pockets near the atomic-valley center is filled. Then we study the electrical transport of the 1-pocket state by solving the Boltzmann equation. We find that the valley polarization could be easily flopped by an in-plane electrical field, which will lead to hysteresis loop in the direct current (DC) $I-V$ curves. Such irreversible current responses in the DC limit will directly induce strong nonlinear and nonreciprocal alternating current (AC) responses, which has been already observed in the recent experiments on BLG.