Quantum Anomalous Hall Crystal at Fractional Filling of Moiré Superlattices

We predict the emergence of a state of matter with intertwined ferromagnetism, charge order, and topology in fractionally filled moiré superlattice bands. Remarkably, these exhibit a quantized integer Hall conductance that is different than expected from the filling and Chern number of the band. Microscopic calculations show that this phase is robustly favored at half-filling (<a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mi>ν</a:mi><a:mo>=</a:mo><a:mn>1</a:mn><a:mo>/</a:mo><a:mn>2</a:mn></a:math>) at larger twist angles of the twisted semiconductor bilayer <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><c:mi>t</c:mi><c:mrow><c:msub><c:mrow><c:mi>MoTe</c:mi></c:mrow><c:mrow><c:mn>2</c:mn></c:mrow></c:msub></c:mrow></c:math>. Published by the American Physical Society 2024