Moiré-Orbital-Resolved Excitonic Mott Insulating States and Their Optical and Electric Control in van der Waals Heterostructures
Moiré potential formed in van der Waals heterostructures is predicted to feature multiple local minima functioning as orbital degree of freedom, which is an important ingredient for understanding intriguing strong correlation phenomena. However, an experimental demonstration of this moiré-orbital enabled quantum state engineering is still unexplored. Here, we report clear evidence of moiré-orbital resolved excitonic Mott insulating states in multiannealing H-type WSe_{2}/WS_{2} heterobilayers and demonstrate their application in generating spatially ordered excitonic quantum phases. This moiré orbital is evidenced by interlayer exciton emissions with an energy separation of ∼65 meV and further supported by our multiple field-dependent characterizations. Remarkably, the moiré orbital allows a sequential formation of correlated Mott insulating states, with the extracted onsite Hubbard interaction reaching ∼30 meV. A combined optical and electric doping allows control of strongly correlated quantum phases with various spatially ordered fermionic-bosonic orbital components.
Authors
- Zhouxiaosong Zeng
- Boyi Xu
- Lanyu Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9192-9993)
- Siyao Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1893-7876)
- Cuihuan Ge (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0732-2005)
- Danliang Zhang
- Kai Braun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3774-0507)
- Xiaoli Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5497-4538)
- Anlian Pan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3335-3067)
- Qingjun Tong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3500-1228)
- Tingge Gao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4711-0365)
- Dong Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0391-7060)
- Xiao Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2973-8215)
- Yufan Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4025-6460)
- Xinyi Luo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6443-7356)
- Haipeng Zhao
Institutions
- Tianjin University (CN)
- Hunan University (CN)
- Hunan Normal University (CN)
- University of Tübingen (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-08-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/gg98-1vhp
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Perovskite Materials and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.46
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province
- Science and Technology Program of Hunan Province
- National Key Research and Development Program of China