Massive Dirac fermions in moiré superlattices: a route towards topological flat minibands

Abstract

We demonstrate a generic mechanism to realize topological flat minibands by confining massive Dirac fermions in a periodic moiré potential, which can be achieved in a heterobilayer of transition metal dichalcogenides. We show that the topological phase can be protected by the symmetry of moiré potential and survive to arbitrarily large Dirac band gap. We take the MoTe${}_2$/WSe${}_2$ heterobilayer as an example and find that the topological phase can be driven by a vertical electric field. By projecting the Coulomb interaction onto the topological fat minibands, we identify a correlated Chern insulator at half filling and a quantum valley-spin Hall insulator at full filling which explains the topological states observed in the MoTe${}_2$/WSe${}_2$ in experiment. Our work clarifies the importance of Dirac structure for the topological minibands and unveils a general strategy to design topological moiré materials.

13 pages, 12 figures

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• Spin-textured Chern bands in AB-stacked transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Theory of fractional Chern insulator states in pentalayer graphene moiré superlattice
• Parent Berry curvature and the ideal anomalous Hall crystal
• Sublattice structure and topology in spontaneously crystallized electronic states
• 1/4 is the new 1/2 when topology is intertwined with Mottness
• Superconductivity and bosonic fluid emerging from Moiré flat bands
• Excitonic Chern insulator and kinetic ferromagnetism in MoTe${}_2$/WSe${}_2$ moiré bilayer
• Gate-tunable topological phases in superlattice modulated bilayer graphene
• Engineering the in-plane anomalous Hall effect in Cd${}_3$As${}_2$ thin films
• Quantum anomalous Hall effect and electric-field-induced topological phase transition in AB-stacked MoTe${}_2$/WSe${}_2$ moiré heterobilayers
• Contrasting twisted bilayer graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides for fractional Chern insulators: an emergent gauge picture
• Designing topology and fractionalization in narrow gap semiconductor films via electrostatic engineering
• Efficient prediction of superlattice and anomalous miniband topology from quantum geometry
• Berry curvature, spin Hall effect and nonlinear optical response in moiré transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers
• A Sport and a Pastime: Model Design and Computation in Quantum Many-Body Systems
• Correlated Topological Mixed-Valence Insulators in Moiré Hetero-Bilayers
• Topological $p_x+i{p}_y$ inter-valley coherent state in Moiré MoTe${}_2$/WSe${}_2$ heterobilayers
• Twistronics and moiré superlattice physics in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides
• Artificial moiré engineering for an ideal BHZ model
• Moiré plane wave expansion model for scanning tunneling microscopy simulations of incommensurate two-dimensional materials
• Topological phase transition from periodic edge states in moiré superlattices
• Engineering topological exciton structures in two-dimensional semiconductors by a periodic electrostatic potential
• Intervalley Band Crossing and Transition of Fractional Chern Insulators in Floquet Twisted Bilayer MoTe${}_2$