Electronic liquid crystals and superconductivity from doping a moiré Mott insulator
Abstract
Electronic liquid crystals, such as stripe phases and nematics, are self-organized states of matter with spontaneously broken rotational symmetry. They are expected to emerge in a doped Mott insulator as a compromise between short- and long-range Coulomb interactions, and are believed to be intimately connected to the emergence of high temperature superconductivity either as a competing order or an intertwined order. Moiré semiconductors provide a controllable platform to explore the relationship between stripe phases and superconductivity near a Mott insulator. Here we report the generic appearance of stripe phases in a doped moiré Mott insulator and the observation of a stripe to-superconductor quantum phase transition in twisted bilayer WSe2. The stripe phases were revealed by electrical transport studies as a thermodynamic phase transition from a high temperature isotropic phase to a low-temperature anisotropic phase accompanied by a Fermi surface reconstruction. Near the stripe-to-superconductor transition, we also observed an additional thermodynamic phase transition from metallic stripes to pinned insulating stripes. The stripe-to-superconductor transition further exhibits an intriguing self-similarity that highlights the intimate relationship between the two orders. Our results pave the path for studying intertwined orders in moiré materials.
Related
- Topological Chiral Superconductivity from Doping Correlated Charge Transfer Insulator with Orbital Magnetism
- Effects of Alkaline-Earth-Metal Ion Co-Doping in Cerium-Doped Tl2LiYCl6 Crystals
- Chiral p-Wave Superconductivity Proximate to a Fractional Chern Insulator and a Topological Charge Density Wave in a Moiré Chern Band
- Re-entrant p-wave superconductivity in a Chern Dartboard Insulator
- Uniform-Charge-Density d-Wave Superconductivity in the Pure t-J Model at 1/8 Doping on an Infinite Cylinder
BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026electronic,
title = {{Electronic liquid crystals and superconductivity from doping a moiré Mott insulator}},
author = {Yichi Zhang and Yiyu Xia and Zhongdong Han and Jekwan Lee and Brandon Bauer and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi and Wenjin Zhao and Kin Fai Mak and Jie Shan},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.39978},
eprint = {2610.39978},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.39978},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Electronic liquid crystals and superconductivity from doping a moiré Mott insulator
AU - Yichi Zhang
AU - Yiyu Xia
AU - Zhongdong Han
AU - Jekwan Lee
AU - Brandon Bauer
AU - Kenji Watanabe
AU - Takashi Taniguchi
AU - Wenjin Zhao
AU - Kin Fai Mak
AU - Jie Shan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.39978
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.39978
AB - Electronic liquid crystals, such as stripe phases and nematics, are self-organized states of matter with spontaneously broken rotational symmetry. They are expected to emerge in a doped Mott insulator as a compromise between short- and long-range Coulomb interactions, and are believed to be intimately connected to the emergence of high temperature superconductivity either as a competing order or an intertwined order. Moiré semiconductors provide a controllable platform to explore the relationship between stripe phases and superconductivity near a Mott insulator. Here we report the generic appearance of stripe phases in a doped moiré Mott insulator and the observation of a stripe to-superconductor quantum phase transition in twisted bilayer WSe2. The stripe phases were revealed by electrical transport studies as a thermodynamic phase transition from a high temperature isotropic phase to a low-temperature anisotropic phase accompanied by a Fermi surface reconstruction. Near the stripe-to-superconductor transition, we also observed an additional thermodynamic phase transition from metallic stripes to pinned insulating stripes. The stripe-to-superconductor transition further exhibits an intriguing self-similarity that highlights the intimate relationship between the two orders. Our results pave the path for studying intertwined orders in moiré materials.
ER -