Emergent magnetic field from the moiré of homobilayer 2D semiconductors

The spatial texture of internal degree of freedom of electrons has profound effects on material properties. Such texture in real space can manifest as an emergent magnetic field, which is expected to induce interesting transport phenomena. Moiré pattern as a spatial variation at the interface of 2D atomic crystals provides a natural platform for investigating such real space Berry phase effect [1]. Here we study Moiré structures formed in homobilayer TMD due to twisting, uniform strains, and their combinations [2], where electrons can reside in either layer with the layer index serving as an internal degree of freedom. The layer pseudospin exhibits vortex/antivortex textures in the Moiré supercell, which leads to a giant magnetic field. We will show that strain and interlayer bias can be used to engineer the in-plane and out-of-plane layer pseudospin texture, respectively. Therefore, the profile, intensity, and flux of the magnetic field are highly tunable, rendering TMD Moiré structures promising for transport and topological material applications.

[1] H. Yu, M. Chen, and W. Yao, Natl. Sci. Rev. (2019).
[2] D. Zhai et al., in preperation.