Interaction-limited conductivity of twisted bilayer graphene revealed by giant terahertz photoresistance (2509.02552v1)

Abstract: Identifying the microscopic processes that limit conductivity is essential for understanding correlated and quantum-critical states in quantum materials. In twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) and other twist-controlled materials, the temperature dependence of metallic resistivity follows power-law scaling, with the exponent spanning a broad range, rendering standard transport measurements insufficient to unambiguously identify the dominant scattering processes and giving rise to competing interpretations ranging from phonon-limited transport and umklapp scattering to strange metallicity and heavy fermion renormalization. Here, we use terahertz (THz) excitation to selectively raise the electron temperature in TBG while keeping the lattice cold, enabling a direct separation of electron-electron and electron-phonon contributions to resistivity. We observe a giant THz photoresistance, reaching up to 70% in magic-angle devices, demonstrating that electronic interactions dominate transport even in regimes previously attributed to phonons, including the linear-in-temperature resistivity near the magic angle. Away from the magic angle, we observe coexisting photoresistance and robust quadratic-in-temperature resistivity at extremely low carrier densities where standard electron-electron scattering mechanisms (umklapp and Baber inter-band scattering) are kinematically forbidden. Our analysis identifies the breakdown of Galilean invariance in the Dirac-type dispersion as a possible origin of the interaction-limited conductivity, arising from inter-valley electron-electron collisions. Beyond twisted bilayer graphene, our approach establishes THz-driven hot-electron transport as a general framework for disentangling scattering mechanisms in low-density quantum materials.