Doping and inverting Mott insulators on semiconductor moire superlattices

11/02/2022 12:45 pm - 1:45 pm
CMSA Room G10
Address: CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Speaker: Liang Fu (MIT)

Title: Doping and inverting Mott insulators on semiconductor moire superlattices

Abstract: Semiconductor bilayer heterostructures provide a remarkable platform for simulating Hubbard models on an emergent lattice defined by moire potential minima. As a hallmark of Hubbard model physics, the Mott insulator state with local magnetic moments has been observed at half filling of moire band. In this talk, I will describe new phases of matter that grow out of the canonical 120-degree antiferromagnetic Mott insulator on the triangular lattice. First, in an intermediate range of magnetic fields, doping this Mott insulator gives rise to a dilute gas of spin polarons, which form a pseudogap metal. Second, the application of an electric field between the two layers can invert the many-body gap of a charge-transfer Mott insulator, resulting in a continuous phase transition to a quantum anomalous Hall insulator with a chiral spin structure. Experimental results will be discussed and compared with theoretical predictions.