Fractional Chern Insulators vs. Non-Magnetic States in Twisted Bilayer MoTe$_2$

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Yu, Jiabin, Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah, Wang, Minxuan, Vafek, Oskar, Bernevig, B. Andrei, Regnault, Nicolas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Yu, Jiabin
Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah
Wang, Minxuan
Vafek, Oskar
Bernevig, B. Andrei
Regnault, Nicolas
author_facet Yu, Jiabin
Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah
Wang, Minxuan
Vafek, Oskar
Bernevig, B. Andrei
Regnault, Nicolas
contents Fractionally filled Chern bands with strong interactions may give rise to fractional Chern insulator (FCI) states, the zero-field analogue of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Recent experiments have demonstrated the existence of FCIs in twisted bilayer MoTe$_2$ without external magnetic fields -- most robust at $ν=-2/3$ -- as well as Chern insulators (CIs) at $ν=-1$. Although the appearance of both of these states is theoretically natural in an interacting topological system, experiments repeatedly observe nonmagnetic states (lacking FCIs) at $ν=-1/3$ and $-4/3$, a puzzling result which has not been fully theoretically explained. In this work, we perform Hartree-Fock and exact diagonalization calculations to test whether the standard MoTe$_2$ moiré model with the (greatly varying) parameter values available in the literature can reproduce the non-magnetic states at $ν=-1/3$ and $-4/3$ in unison with the FCI at $ν=-2/3$ and CI state at $ν= -1$. We focus on the experimentally relevant twist angles and, crucially, include remote bands. We find that the parameters proposed in [Wang et al. (2023)] can nearly capture the experimental phenomena at $ν=-1/3,-2/3,-1,-4/3$ simultaneously, though the predicted ground states at $ν=-1/3$ are still mostly fully-spin-polarized and a larger dielectric constant $ε>10$ than is typical of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) substrate $ε\sim 6$ is required. Our results show the importance of remote bands in identifying the competing magnetic orders and lay the groundwork for further study of the realistic phase diagram.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_14429
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fractional Chern Insulators vs. Non-Magnetic States in Twisted Bilayer MoTe$_2$
Yu, Jiabin
Herzog-Arbeitman, Jonah
Wang, Minxuan
Vafek, Oskar
Bernevig, B. Andrei
Regnault, Nicolas
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Fractionally filled Chern bands with strong interactions may give rise to fractional Chern insulator (FCI) states, the zero-field analogue of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Recent experiments have demonstrated the existence of FCIs in twisted bilayer MoTe$_2$ without external magnetic fields -- most robust at $ν=-2/3$ -- as well as Chern insulators (CIs) at $ν=-1$. Although the appearance of both of these states is theoretically natural in an interacting topological system, experiments repeatedly observe nonmagnetic states (lacking FCIs) at $ν=-1/3$ and $-4/3$, a puzzling result which has not been fully theoretically explained. In this work, we perform Hartree-Fock and exact diagonalization calculations to test whether the standard MoTe$_2$ moiré model with the (greatly varying) parameter values available in the literature can reproduce the non-magnetic states at $ν=-1/3$ and $-4/3$ in unison with the FCI at $ν=-2/3$ and CI state at $ν= -1$. We focus on the experimentally relevant twist angles and, crucially, include remote bands. We find that the parameters proposed in [Wang et al. (2023)] can nearly capture the experimental phenomena at $ν=-1/3,-2/3,-1,-4/3$ simultaneously, though the predicted ground states at $ν=-1/3$ are still mostly fully-spin-polarized and a larger dielectric constant $ε>10$ than is typical of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) substrate $ε\sim 6$ is required. Our results show the importance of remote bands in identifying the competing magnetic orders and lay the groundwork for further study of the realistic phase diagram.
title Fractional Chern Insulators vs. Non-Magnetic States in Twisted Bilayer MoTe$_2$
topic Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.14429