The chiral Hamiltonian for twisted graphene bilayers is analyzed in terms of its squared Hamiltonian which removes the particle-hole symmetry and thus one bipartite lattice, allowing us to write the Hamiltonian in terms of a 2×2 matrix. This brings to the front the three main physical actors of twisted systems: kinetic energy, confinement potential, and an interlayer interaction operator which is divided in two parts: a non-Abelian interlayer operator and an operator which contains an interaction energy between layers. Here, each of these components is analyzed as a function of the angle of rotation as well as in terms of the wave-function localization properties. It is proved that the non-Abelian operator represents interlayer currents between each layer of triangular sublattices, i.e., a second-neighbor interlayer current between bipartite sublattices. A crossover is seen between such contributions, and thus, the first magic-angle is different from other higher-order magic-angles. Such angles are determined by a balance between the negative energy contribution from interlayer currents and the positive contributions from the kinetic and confinement energies. A perturbative analysis performed around the first magic-angle allows us to explore analytically the details of such an energy balance.

• Received 9 November 2021
• Revised 8 February 2022
• Accepted 22 March 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.115434