Transport kinetics in excitonic Mott insulator
Abstract
Indirect excitons (IXs) in a periodic moiré potential in a van der Waals heterostructure form an experimental platform for exploring Bose-Hubbard physics, including the superfluid state and the Mott insulator state. The realization of these collective states requires low-disorder materials. In particular, the localization due to the Mott insulator must be distinguished from disorder-induced localization. We studied the transport kinetics of IXs in a MoSe2/WSe2 van der Waals heterostructure with an anomalously high IX mobility, consistent with superfluidity. This high-mobility transport demonstrates that disorder-induced localization is negligible. We found a remarkable suppression of this efficient IX transport, directly indicating the Mott insulator. As the IX density increases during the excitation pulse, the IX cloud initially expands and then contracts upon entering the Mott insulator phase. The emergence of IX cloud contraction is accompanied by a peak in the IX spatial distribution at the origin. Our simulations reproduce the observed non-monotonic IX transport kinetics, including the temporal expansion and contraction of the IX cloud, as well as the peak in its spatial distribution.
Related
- Electronic structure of a persistent excitonic fluid far beyond the Mott limit
- Spinless Charged Excitation at the Interface between a Conventional Topological Insulator and a Topological Mott Insulator
- Information Entropy as a Sensitive Diagnostic of Relaxation Dynamics in a Quasiperiodic Mott Insulator
- Reservoir-conditioned virtual returns generate random Liouvillian skin localization in a reciprocal Mott insulator
- Dynamical many-body control of high harmonic generation in a Mott insulator
BibTeX
@misc{brunner2026transport,
title = {{Transport kinetics in excitonic Mott insulator}},
author = {W. J. Brunner and Zhiwen Zhou and Luc M. Nguyen and C. A. Lozano and G. Mercado and L. H. Fowler-Gerace and L. V. Butov},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.14426},
eprint = {2610.14426},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.14426},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Transport kinetics in excitonic Mott insulator
AU - W. J. Brunner
AU - Zhiwen Zhou
AU - Luc M. Nguyen
AU - C. A. Lozano
AU - G. Mercado
AU - L. H. Fowler-Gerace
AU - L. V. Butov
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/10
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.14426
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.14426
AB - Indirect excitons (IXs) in a periodic moiré potential in a van der Waals heterostructure form an experimental platform for exploring Bose-Hubbard physics, including the superfluid state and the Mott insulator state. The realization of these collective states requires low-disorder materials. In particular, the localization due to the Mott insulator must be distinguished from disorder-induced localization. We studied the transport kinetics of IXs in a MoSe_2/WSe_2 van der Waals heterostructure with an anomalously high IX mobility, consistent with superfluidity. This high-mobility transport demonstrates that disorder-induced localization is negligible. We found a remarkable suppression of this efficient IX transport, directly indicating the Mott insulator. As the IX density increases during the excitation pulse, the IX cloud initially expands and then contracts upon entering the Mott insulator phase. The emergence of IX cloud contraction is accompanied by a peak in the IX spatial distribution at the origin. Our simulations reproduce the observed non-monotonic IX transport kinetics, including the temporal expansion and contraction of the IX cloud, as well as the peak in its spatial distribution.
ER -