Probing Landau levels of strongly interacting massive Dirac electrons in layer-polarized MoS$_2$

TL;DR

This study investigates many-body interaction effects in the Landau levels of massive Dirac electrons in layer-polarized MoS$_2$, revealing interaction-enhanced g-factors, LL crossings, and quantum Hall Ising ferromagnet formation at high magnetic fields.

Contribution

First transport measurements of Landau levels in MoS$_2$ showing interaction-driven phenomena like valley polarization transitions and quantum Hall ferromagnetism.

Findings

Observation of valley ferrimagnet-to-ferromagnet transitions

Interaction-enhanced g-factors from 5.64 to 21.82

Detection of LL anticrossings indicating quantum Hall Ising ferromagnets

Abstract

Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides are recently emerged 2D electronic systems with various novel properties, such as spin-valley locking, circular dichroism, valley Hall effects, Ising superconductivity. The reduced dimensionality and large effective masses further produce unconventional many-body interaction effects. Although recent hole transport measurements in WSe$_2$ indicate strong interactions in the valence bands, many-body interaction effects, particularly in the conduction bands, remain elusive to date. Here, for the first time, we perform transport measurements up to a magnetic field of $29$T to study the massive Dirac electron Landau levels (LL) in layer-polarized MoS$_2$ samples with mobilities of $22000$cm$^2$/(V$\cdot$s) at $1.5$K and densities of $\sim10^{12}$cm$^{-2}$. With decreasing the density, we observe LL crossing induced valley ferrimagnet-to-ferromagnet transitions, as a result of the interaction enhancement of the g-factor from $5.64$ to $21.82$. Near integer ratios of Zeeman-to-cyclotron energies, we discover LL anticrossings due to the formation of quantum Hall Ising ferromagnets, the valley polarizations of which appear to be reversible by tuning the density or an in-plane magnetic field. Our results provide compelling evidence for many-body interaction effects in the conduction bands of monolayer MoS$_2$ and establish a fertile ground for exploring strongly correlated phenomena of massive Dirac electrons.