Moir\'e-mediated phases in synthetic Kondo superlattices

TL;DR

This paper explores how moiré patterns in layered materials can induce novel phases in Kondo systems, revealing complex magnetic and insulating behaviors driven by stacking-dependent interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a moiré extension of the Kondo-Heisenberg model and analyzes its phase diagram, uncovering new phases and phase separation phenomena in strongly correlated layered systems.

Findings

Magnetic order and heavy quasiparticles can spatially separate within moiré superlattices.

Moiré patterns can induce a metal to Kondo insulator transition via percolation.

Stacking-dependent interactions lead to diverse emergent phases in correlated layers.

Abstract

Motivated by the recent experiments on van der Waals heterostructures involving metallic and Mott insulating layers, we construct a moir\'e extension of the Kondo-Heisenberg model and study its phase diagram via Abrikosov fermion mean field theory in one and two dimensions. Our analysis indicates that the stacking dependent Kondo interaction can lead to a variety of new phases. In particular, we show that magnetic order and heavy quasiparticles can nucleate at different regions in the moir\'e unit cell leading to a macroscopic real space phase separation. We observe that these factors can lead to a metal to Kondo insulator percolation transition in two dimensions. Our results highlight the rich physics that can arise in moir\'e superlattices that are composed of inherently strongly correlated layers.