Doping a Wigner-Mott insulator: Exotic charge orders in transition-metal dichalcogenide moir\'e heterobilayers

Abstract

The moir\'e pattern induced by lattice mismatch in transition-metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers causes the formation of flat bands, where interactions dominate the kinetic energy. At fractional fillings of the flat valence band, the long-range electron interactions then induce Wigner-Mott crystals. In this Letter we investigate the nontrivial electronic phases appearing away from commensurate fillings. Here, competing phases arise that are either characterized as doped Wigner-Mott charge transfer insulators or alternatively, a novel state with frozen charge order yet is conducting: the 'electron slush'. We propose that an extremely spatially inhomogeneous local density of states can serve as a key signature of the electron slush.