Back to Search Start Over

Hofstadter states and reentrant charge order in a semiconductor moir\'e lattice

Authors :
Kometter, Carlos R.
Yu, Jiachen
Devakul, Trithep
Reddy, Aidan P.
Zhang, Yang
Foutty, Benjamin A.
Watanabe, Kenji
Taniguchi, Takashi
Fu, Liang
Feldman, Benjamin E.
Source :
Nature Physics 19, 1861-1867 (2023)
Publication Year :
2022

Abstract

The emergence of moir\'e materials with flat bands provides a platform to systematically investigate and precisely control correlated electronic phases. Here, we report local electronic compressibility measurements of a twisted WSe$_2$/MoSe$_2$ heterobilayer which reveal a rich phase diagram of interpenetrating Hofstadter states and electron solids. We show that this reflects the presence of both flat and dispersive moir\'e bands whose relative energies, and therefore occupations, are tuned by density and magnetic field. At low densities, competition between moir\'e bands leads to a transition from commensurate arrangements of singlets at doubly occupied sites to triplet configurations at high fields. Hofstadter states (i.e., Chern insulators) are generally favored at high densities as dispersive bands are populated, but are suppressed by an intervening region of reentrant charge-ordered states in which holes originating from multiple bands cooperatively crystallize. Our results reveal the key microscopic ingredients that favor distinct correlated ground states in semiconductor moir\'e systems, and they demonstrate an emergent lattice model system in which both interactions and band dispersion can be experimentally controlled.

Details

Database :
arXiv
Journal :
Nature Physics 19, 1861-1867 (2023)
Publication Type :
Report
Accession number :
edsarx.2212.05068
Document Type :
Working Paper
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02195-0