Exciton condensates (EC) are macroscopic coherent states arising from condensation of electron-hole pairs. Bilayer heterostructures, consisting of two-dimensional electron and hole layers separated by a tunnel barrier, provide a versatile platform to
realize and study EC. The tunnel barrier suppresses recombination yielding long-lived excitons. However, this separation also reduces interlayer Coulomb interactions, limiting the exciton binding strength. Here, we report the observation of EC in naturally occurring 2H-stacked bilayer WSe$_2$. In this system, the intrinsic spin-valley structure suppresses interlayer tunneling even when the separation is reduced to the atomic limit, providing access to a previously unattainable regime of strong interlayer coupling. Using capacitance spectroscopy, we investigate magneto-EC, formed when partially filled Landau levels (LL) couple between the layers. We find that the strong-coupling EC show dramatically different behaviour compared with previous reports, including an unanticipated variation of the EC robustness with the orbital number, and find evidence for a transition between two types of low-energy charged excitations. Our results provide a demonstration of tuning EC properties by varying the constituent single-particle wavefunctions.
In moire heterostructures, gate-tunable insulating phases driven by electronic correlations have been recently discovered. Here, we use transport measurements to characterize the gate-driven metal-insulator transitions and the metallic phase in twist
ed WSe$_2$ near half filling of the first moire subband. We find that the metal-insulator transition as a function of both density and displacement field is continuous. At the metal-insulator boundary, the resistivity displays strange metal behaviour at low temperature with dissipation comparable to the Planckian limit. Further into the metallic phase, Fermi-liquid behaviour is recovered at low temperature which evolves into a quantum critical fan at intermediate temperatures before eventually reaching an anomalous saturated regime near room temperature. An analysis of the residual resistivity indicates the presence of strong quantum fluctuations in the insulating phase. These results establish twisted WSe$_2$ as a new platform to study doping and bandwidth controlled metal-insulator quantum phase transitions on the triangular lattice.
Charge separated interlayer excitons in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) heterobilayers are being explored for moire exciton lattices and exciton condensates. The presence of permanent dipole moments and the poorly screened Coulomb interaction
make many body interactions particularly strong for interlayer excitons. Here we reveal two distinct phase transitions for interlayer excitons in the MoSe2/WSe2 heterobilayer using time and spatially resolved photoluminescence imaging: from trapped excitons in the moire-potential to the modestly mobile exciton gas as exciton density increases to ne/h ~ 1011 cm-2 and from the exciton gas to the highly mobile charge separated electron/hole plasma for ne/h > 1012 cm-2. The latter is the Mott transition and is confirmed in photoconductivity measurements. These findings set fundamental limits for achieving quantum states of interlayer excitons.
Monolayer (ML) semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) represent a unique class of two-dimensional (2D) electron systems. Their atomically thin structure -- just like graphene -- facilitates gate-tunability, while the sizable band gap
and strong spin-orbit coupling hold promise for properties beyond graphene. Measurements under large magnetic fields have revealed an unusual LL structure, distinct from other 2D electron systems. However, owing to limited sample quality and poor electrical contact, probing the lowest Landau levels (LLs) has been challenging, and observation of electron correlations within the fractionally filled LLs regime has not been possible. Here, through bulk electronic compressibility measurements, we investigate the LL structure of ML WSe$_2$ in the extreme quantum limit, and observe fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states in the lowest three LLs. The odd-denominator FQH sequences demonstrate a systematic evolution with the LL orbital index, which has not been observed in any other system but is consistent with generic theoretical expectations. In addition, we observe an even-denominator state in the second LL that is expected to host non-Abelian statistics. Our results suggest that the 2D semiconductors can provide an experimental platform that closely resembles idealized theoretical models in the quantum Hall regime.
Emergent quantum phases driven by electronic interactions can manifest in materials with narrowly dispersing, i.e. flat, energy bands. Recently, flat bands have been realized in a variety of graphene-based heterostructures using the tuning parameters
of twist angle, layer stacking and pressure, and resulting in correlated insulator and superconducting states. Here we report the experimental observation of similar correlated phenomena in twisted bilayer tungsten diselenide (tWSe2), a semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD). Unlike twisted bilayer graphene where the flat band appears only within a narrow range around a magic angle, we observe correlated states over a continuum of angles, spanning 4 degree to 5.1 degree. A Mott-like insulator appears at half band filling that can be sensitively tuned with displacement field. Hall measurements supported by ab initio calculations suggest that the strength of the insulator is driven by the density of states at half filling, consistent with a 2D Hubbard model in a regime of moderate interactions. At 5.1 degree twist, we observe evidence of superconductivity upon doping away from half filling, reaching zero resistivity around 3 K. Our results establish twisted bilayer TMDs as a model system to study interaction-driven phenomena in flat bands with dynamically tunable interactions.
