Spin-textured Chern bands in AB-stacked transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers

Abstract

While transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD)–based moir ́e mate-rials have been shown to host various correlated electronicphenomena, topological states have not been experimentallyobserved until now [T. Li et al., Quantum anomalous Halleffect from intertwined moir ́e bands. arXiv [Preprint] (2021).https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.01796 (Accessed 5 July 2021)]. In thiswork, using first-principle calculations and continuum modeling,we reveal the displacement field–induced topological moir ́e bandsin AB-stacked TMD heterobilayer MoTe2/WSe2. Valley-contrastingChern bands with nontrivial spin texture are formed from inter-layer hybridization between MoTe2and WSe2bands of nominallyopposite spins. Our study establishes a recipe for creating topo-logical bands in AB-stacked TMD bilayers in general, which pro-vides a highly tunable platform for realizing quantum-spin Halland interaction-induced quantum anomalous Hall effects