Correlated Insulator Moiré Bolometer
Abstract
Light incident on an insulator is generally not expected to turn it into a metal without invoking intense ultrafast excitation that leads to transient structural transitions. Here we show that magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene tuned to half filling of the moiré band provides a notable exception to this expectation. We find that weak beam of long-wavelength photons, with energies comparable to the flat-band width, selectively heat the low-heat-capacity electronic subsystem, thereby suppressing the correlated gap. This produces a giant resistance change governed not by a persistent photocarrier population, but by the extreme sensitivity of a many-body correlated gap to weak electronic heating. The resulting photon-driven insulator-to-metal transition produces a broadband low-noise photoresponse with voltage responsivity exceeding millivolts per nW of absorbed power. The mechanism is dual to superconducting hot-electron response: radiation-heated electrons suppress a many-body order, but in reverse the correlated insulator melts into a metal, providing robustness to magnetic fields of several tesla and a sharp insulator-to-metal resistive contrast. Our results establish correlated flat-band systems as a platform for ultra-sensitive detection of faint long-wavelength radiation.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{elesin2026correlated,
title = {{Correlated Insulator Moiré Bolometer}},
author = {L. Elesin and A. L. Shilov and M. Kravtsov and X. Zhou and M. Lukianov and A. Kuksov and S. Jana and I. Iorsh and R. Izmaylov and K. Shein and I. Gayduchenko and T. Taniguchi and K. Watanabe and K. S. Novoselov and G. N. Goltsman and A. Principi and D. A. Bandurin},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.00488},
eprint = {2608.00488},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.00488},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Correlated Insulator Moiré Bolometer
AU - L. Elesin
AU - A. L. Shilov
AU - M. Kravtsov
AU - X. Zhou
AU - M. Lukianov
AU - A. Kuksov
AU - S. Jana
AU - I. Iorsh
AU - R. Izmaylov
AU - K. Shein
AU - I. Gayduchenko
AU - T. Taniguchi
AU - K. Watanabe
AU - K. S. Novoselov
AU - G. N. Goltsman
AU - A. Principi
AU - D. A. Bandurin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.00488
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.00488
AB - Light incident on an insulator is generally not expected to turn it into a metal without invoking intense ultrafast excitation that leads to transient structural transitions. Here we show that magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene tuned to half filling of the moiré band provides a notable exception to this expectation. We find that weak beam of long-wavelength photons, with energies comparable to the flat-band width, selectively heat the low-heat-capacity electronic subsystem, thereby suppressing the correlated gap. This produces a giant resistance change governed not by a persistent photocarrier population, but by the extreme sensitivity of a many-body correlated gap to weak electronic heating. The resulting photon-driven insulator-to-metal transition produces a broadband low-noise photoresponse with voltage responsivity exceeding millivolts per nW of absorbed power. The mechanism is dual to superconducting hot-electron response: radiation-heated electrons suppress a many-body order, but in reverse the correlated insulator melts into a metal, providing robustness to magnetic fields of several tesla and a sharp insulator-to-metal resistive contrast. Our results establish correlated flat-band systems as a platform for ultra-sensitive detection of faint long-wavelength radiation.
ER -