Tunable Correlated Chern Insulator and Ferromagnetism in Trilayer Graphene/Boron Nitride Moir\'e Superlattice

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental discovery of a tunable, ferromagnetic Chern insulator in trilayer graphene on boron nitride, demonstrating electric field control over topological states and revealing a correlated topological phase with potential for novel excitations.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental observation of a correlated Chern insulator in a moiré superlattice with electric field tunability and ferromagnetic properties.

Findings

Reversing electric field switches Chern number in moiré minibands.

Quantized Hall resistance at h/2e2 indicating C=2 Chern number.

The insulator exhibits ferromagnetism and magnetic hysteresis.

Abstract

Studies on two-dimensional electron systems in a strong magnetic field first revealed the quantum Hall (QH) effect, a topological state of matter featuring a finite Chern number (C) and chiral edge states. Haldane later theorized that Chern insulators with integer QH effects could appear in lattice models with complex hopping parameters even at zero magnetic field. The ABC-trilayer graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (TLG/hBN) moir\'e superlattice provides an attractive platform to explore Chern insulators because it features nearly flat moir\'e minibands with a valley-dependent electrically tunable Chern number. Here we report the experimental observation of a correlated Chern insulator in a TLG/hBN moir\'e superlattice. We show that reversing the direction of the applied vertical electric field switches TLG/hBN's moir\'e minibands between zero and finite Chern numbers, as revealed by dramatic changes in magneto-transport behavior. For topological hole minibands tuned to have a finite Chern number, we focus on 1/4 filling, corresponding to one hole per moir\'e unit cell. The Hall resistance is well quantized at h/2e2, i.e. C = 2, for |B| > 0.4 T. The correlated Chern insulator is ferromagnetic, exhibiting significant magnetic hysteresis and a large anomalous Hall signal at zero magnetic field. Our discovery of a C = 2 Chern insulator at zero magnetic field should open up exciting opportunities for discovering novel correlated topological states, possibly with novel topological excitations, in nearly flat and topologically nontrivial moir\'e minibands.