Topological px+ipy inter-valley coherent state in Moir\'e MoTe2/WSe2 heterobilayers
Abstract
Recently, a quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) state was observed in AB stacked moir\'e MoTe2/WSe2 heterobilayers at half-filling. More recent layer-resolved magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) measurements revealed that spin-polarized moir\'e bands from both the MoTe2 and the WSe2 layers are involved at the formation of the QAH state. This scenario is not expected by existing theories. In this work, we suggest that the observed QAH state is a new state of matter, namely, a topological px+ipy inter-valley coherent state (TIVC). We point out that the massive Dirac spectrum of the MoTe2 moir\'e bands, together with the Hund's interaction and the Coulomb interactions give rise to this novel QAH state. Through a self-consistent Hartree-Fock analysis, we find a wide range of interaction strengths and displacement fields that the px+ipy-pairing phase is energetically favourable. Besides explaining several key features of the experiments, our theory predicts that the order parameter would involve the pairing of electrons and holes with a definite momentum mismatch such that the pairing would generate a new unit cell which is three times the size of the original moir\'e unit cell, due to the order parameter modulations.
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