Robust valley-polarized excitonic Mott states and doublons enabled by stacking-controlled moiré geometry
Atomically-thin moiré superlattices offer an optically accessible platform for interacting bosons, where strong onsite repulsion $U_{xx}$ suppresses double occupancy and supports excitonic Mott states at unit filling. However, moiré confinement also enhances phonon- and disorder-assisted relaxation, challenging the robustness of these correlated states under dissipation. Here we show that strengthening the intersite exciton repulsion $V_{xx}$ between neighboring moiré cells offers a distinct route to stabilizing unit-filling excitonic Mott states. In H-stacked WSe2/WS2, moiré confinement endows interlayer excitons with an out-of-plane dipole and a pronounced in-plane quadrupolar charge distribution. Helicity-resolved transient photoluminescence, supported by first-principles-informed modelling, reveals that this quadrupolar geometry increases $V_{xx}$ at unit filling by at least a factor of two relative to the dipolar R-stacked excitons. Despite a slight reduction in $U_{xx}$, the enhanced $V_{xx}$ yields a long-lived, valley-polarized excitonic Mott state at unit filling that persists for ~12 ns - more than twice as long as in R-stacks - and remains robust up to ~50 K. Beyond unit filling, the same geometry supports valley-polarized doublons with fourfold longer lifetimes than in R-stacks. These results establish moiré-geometric control of intersite interactions as a route to stabilizing excitonic Mott states and doublons against dissipation in solids.
Authors
- Si-Jie Chang
- Seth Ariel Tongay
- Yunbo Ou
- Kenji Watanabe
- Ting Cao
- Shou-Chien Chiu
- Meng-Che Yeh
- Jie-Yong Zeng
- Yu-Wei Hsieh
- Xiao-Wei Zhang
- Takashi Taniguchi
- Po-Chun Huang
- Jia-Sian Su
- Hao-Tien Chu
- Chaw-Keong Yong
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2026-09-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-77907-0
- Primary Topic
- 2D Materials and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00