Exciton and light induced ferromagnetism from doping a moir\'e Mott insulator

Abstract

Significant efforts have been dedicated to achieving excitonic insulators. In this paper, we explore a new problem of doping excitons into a Mott insulator instead of a band insulator. Specifically, we start with a Mott insulator on a triangular moir\'e superlattice in a transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) layer and inject excitons by either transferring particles to a different layer or optically pumping electrons from the valence to the conduction band. In both cases, the excitons move in the presence of local spin moments inherited from the Mott insulator. When the Heisenberg spin coupling $J$ is small, the kinetic energy of the excitons decides the magnetism, akin to Nagaoka ferromagnetism in hole-doped Mott insulators. Through density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations, we demonstrate that the spin moments originating from the Mott insulator form $120^\circ$ antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic order for the two signs of the exciton hoppings over a broad range of exciton densities. Notably, the optical pump case may result in an antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic transition with increasing exciton density, indicating a potential mechanism for light-induced ferromagnetism. A similar exciton-induced ferromagnetism could be achieved in a moir\'e-monolayer system where the monolayer is electron-doped while the moir\'e Mott insulator is hole-doped. Our works demonstrates a new possibility to engineering magnetism through doping neutral excitons.