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I’m always interested in reading about new work being done in theoretical physics. That being said, I got halfway through this article and I’m still scratching
by oliveshell 7y ago
I’m always interested in reading about new work being done in theoretical physics.
That being said, I got halfway through this article and I’m still scratching my head as to what is meant by “twisting” here.
From the discussion of sheets lining up with one another, I assume they mean rotating one sheet relative to the other along a shared normal axis. But when I hear “twisting,“ I think of twisting these sheets like you would do to make a Mobius strip.
Neither the article nor the nice-looking illustration make this clear, so I’m off instead on a Google hunt so that I can conceptualize what’s being worked on here.
Edit: OK, this is pretty cool.
It’s always exciting when new theories are required to explain experimental results— doubly so here since this could yield insight into the physics of superconductivity, which we don’t understand all that well yet.
- selimthegrim 7y agoYou’re correct. Look up moiré patterns and supercells for more intuition. Also sometimes patterns can require more than two sheets (trilayer graphene is also studied)
- oliveshell 7y agoThanks! Makes perfect sense in the context of moiré patterns. I was mostly thrown off by the fancy 3-D illustration in the article. For anyone in a similar boat, here’s an image I found much more helpful: https://images.app.goo.gl/74xuavy8Nun67FTQ8 https://images.app.goo.gl/74xuavy8Nun67FTQ8
- tomaskafka 7y agoAwesome - thanks!
- peter_d_sherman 7y agoSeconded! Great link! Shows geometrically what is going on (the picture presented by the article does not lead to any intuitions of this sort, and might actually serve to (unintentionally) mislead the reader). A picture, the right picture -- is worth a thousand words, as they say. Thank you again for the link.
- SmokeGS 7y agoYup! This image from a nature really helped me https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-assets/d41586-018-07848-2/d41586-018-07848-2_16357200.jpg https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-assets/d41586-018-078... paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07848-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07848-2
- kilovoltaire 7y ago> supercells I think you might mean superlattices - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlattice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlattice
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]