Band topology and the quantum spin Hall effect in bilayer graphene

We consider bilayer graphene in the presence of spin–orbit coupling, in order to assess its behavior as a topological insulator. The first Chern number nn for the energy bands of single-layer graphene and that for the energy bands of bilayer graphene are computed and compared. It is shown that for a given valley and spin, nn for a Bernal-stacked bilayer is doubled with respect to that for the monolayer. This implies that this form of bilayer graphene will have twice as many edge states as single-layer graphene, which we confirm with numerical calculations and analytically in the case of an armchair terminated surface. Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene is a weak topological insulator, whose surface spectrum is susceptible to gap opening under spin-mixing perturbations. We assess the stability of the associated topological bulk state of bilayer graphene under various perturbations. In contrast, we show that AAAA-stacked bilayer graphene is not a topological insulator unless the spin–orbit coupling is bigger than the interlayer hopping. Finally, we consider an intermediate situation in which only one of the two layers has spin–orbit coupling, and find that although individual valleys have non-trivial Chern numbers for the case of Bernal stacking, the spectrum as a whole is not gapped, so the system is not a topological insulator.

► Monolayer and bilayer graphene in the presence of spin–orbit coupling are topological insulators.
► We study their band structure and Chern number.
► We analyze the link between chiral edge states and the quantum spin Hall effect.