Valley-Polarized Quantum Anomalous Hall State in Moir\'e MoTe$_2$/WSe$_2$ Heterobilayers

Abstract

Moir\'e heterobilayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) emerge as an ideal system for simulating the single-band Hubbard model and interesting correlated phases have been observed in these systems. Nevertheless, the moir\'e bands in heterobilayer TMDs were believed to be topologically trivial. Recently, it was reported that both a quantum valley Hall insulating state at filling $\nu=2$ (two holes per moir\'e unit cell) and a valley-polarized quantum anomalous Hall state at filling $\nu=1$ were observed in AB stacked moir\'e MoTe$_2$/WSe$_2$ heterobilayers. However, how the topologically nontrivial states emerge is not known. In this work, we propose that the pseudo-magnetic fields induced by lattice relaxation in moir\'e MoTe$_2$/WSe$_2$ heterobilayers could naturally give rise to moir\'e bands with finite Chern numbers. We show that a time-reversal invariant quantum valley Hall insulator is formed at full-filing $\nu=2$, when two moir\'e bands with opposite Chern numbers are filled. At half-filling $\nu=1$, Coulomb interaction lifts the valley degeneracy and results in a valley-polarized quantum anomalous Hall state, as observed in the experiment. Our theory identifies a new way to achieve topologically non-trivial states in heterobilayer TMD materials.