Anomalously Enhanced Diffusivity of Moiré Excitons via Manipulating the Interplay with Correlated Electrons

Li Yan, Lei Ma, Yuze Meng, Chengxin Xiao, Bo Chen, Qiran Wu, Jingyuan Cui, Qingrui Cao, Rounak Banerjee, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Seth Ariel Tongay, Benjamin Hunt, Yong-Tao Cui, Wang Yao, Su-Fei Shi

Published 2024-10-15Version 1

Semiconducting transitional metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) moir\'e superlattice provides an exciting platform for manipulating excitons. The in-situ control of moir\'e potential confined exciton would usher in unprecedented functions of excitonic devices but remains challenging. Meanwhile, as a dipolar composite boson, interlayer exciton in the type-II aligned TMDC moir\'e superlattice strongly interacts with fermionic charge carriers. Here, we demonstrate active manipulation of the exciton diffusivity by tuning their interplay with correlated carriers in moir\'e potentials. At fractional fillings where carriers are known to form generalized Wigner crystals, we observed suppressed diffusivity of exciton. In contrast, in Fermi liquid states where carriers dynamically populate all moir\'e traps, the repulsive carrier-exciton interaction can effectively reduce the moir\'e potential confinement seen by the exciton, leading to enhanced diffusivity with the increase of the carrier density. Notably, the exciton diffusivity is enhanced by orders of magnitude near the Mott insulator state, and the enhancement is much more pronounced for the 0-degree than the 60-degree aligned WS2/WSe2 heterobilayer due to the more localized nature of interlayer excitons. Our study inspires further engineering and controlling exotic excitonic states in TMDC moir\'e superlattices for fascinating quantum phenomena and novel excitonic devices.