Valley-coherent quantum anomalous Hall state in AB-stacked MoTe2/WSe2 bilayers

Autor: Kin Fai Mak, Zui Tao, Bowen Shen, Shengwei Jiang, Tingxin Li, Lizhong Li, Liguo Ma, Wenjin Zhao, Jenny Hu, Kateryna Pistunova, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Tony Heinz, Jie Shan
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-2015885/v1
Popis: Moiré materials provide fertile ground for the correlated and topological quantum phenomena. Among them, the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect, in which the Hall resistance is quantized even under zero magnetic field, is a direct manifestation of the intrinsic topological properties of a material and an appealing attribute for low-power electronics applications. The QAH effect has been observed in both graphene and transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) moiré materials. It is thought to arise from the interaction-driven valley polarization of the narrow moiré bands. Here, we show surprisingly that the newly discovered QAH state in AB-stacked MoTe2/WSe2 moiré bilayers is not valley-polarized but valley-coherent. The layer- and helicity-resolved optical spectroscopy measurement reveals that the QAH ground state possesses spontaneous spin (valley) polarization aligned (anti-aligned) in two TMD layers. In addition, saturation of the out-of-plane spin polarization in both layers occurs only under high magnetic fields, supporting a canted spin texture. Our results call for a new mechanism for the QAH effect and highlight the potential of TMD moiré materials with strong electronic correlations and spin-orbit interactions for exotic topological states.
Databáze: OpenAIRE