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Main Authors: Mellado, Paula, Muñoz, Francisco, Cabezas-Escares, Javiera
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05696
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author Mellado, Paula
Muñoz, Francisco
Cabezas-Escares, Javiera
author_facet Mellado, Paula
Muñoz, Francisco
Cabezas-Escares, Javiera
contents An incommensurate charge density wave (CDW) is a periodic modulation of charge that breaks translational symmetry incongruently with the underlying lattice. Its low-energy excitations, the phason, are collective, gapless phase fluctuations. We study a half-filled, four-band ladder model where a shift \(δ= p/q\) between the legs leads to a supercell of \(q\) composite cells. The moiré potential narrows minibands near the Fermi level, resulting in additional peaks in the density of states, whose separation is controlled by \(δ\). The inclusion of short-range Coulomb interactions leads to an excitonic incommensurate CDW state. We identify the oscillations in its amplitude with a gapped Higgs collective mode and a lowest-energy Goldstone mode, realized by long-lived neutral phasons whose propagation velocity is governed by the shift \(δ\) and the inter-leg tunneling amplitude. Our results show that even the slightest interlayer mismatches can strongly modify both charge-ordering patterns and low-energy bosonic excitations in layered materials, and suggest that the enigmatic CDW phase in the quasi-one-dimensional compound \(\rm HfTe_3 \) is excitonic in nature.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_05696
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Excitonic Charge Density Waves in Moire Ladders
Mellado, Paula
Muñoz, Francisco
Cabezas-Escares, Javiera
Strongly Correlated Electrons
An incommensurate charge density wave (CDW) is a periodic modulation of charge that breaks translational symmetry incongruently with the underlying lattice. Its low-energy excitations, the phason, are collective, gapless phase fluctuations. We study a half-filled, four-band ladder model where a shift \(δ= p/q\) between the legs leads to a supercell of \(q\) composite cells. The moiré potential narrows minibands near the Fermi level, resulting in additional peaks in the density of states, whose separation is controlled by \(δ\). The inclusion of short-range Coulomb interactions leads to an excitonic incommensurate CDW state. We identify the oscillations in its amplitude with a gapped Higgs collective mode and a lowest-energy Goldstone mode, realized by long-lived neutral phasons whose propagation velocity is governed by the shift \(δ\) and the inter-leg tunneling amplitude. Our results show that even the slightest interlayer mismatches can strongly modify both charge-ordering patterns and low-energy bosonic excitations in layered materials, and suggest that the enigmatic CDW phase in the quasi-one-dimensional compound \(\rm HfTe_3 \) is excitonic in nature.
title Excitonic Charge Density Waves in Moire Ladders
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05696