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- Letter
Localized excitons and Landau-level mixing in time-reversal symmetric pairs of Chern bands
Phys. Rev. B 113, L161121 – Published 28 April, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/8ks3-zcpz
Abstract
We study Landau-level mixing in a time-reversal symmetric Hamiltonian composed of two sets of Landau levels with opposite magnetic field, relevant to moiré minibands in twisted homobilayer transition-metal dichalcogenides in the adiabatic limit, where electrons in opposite valleys have flat Chern bands with opposite Chern numbers. Strong spin-orbit coupling polarizes spins in opposite directions in opposite valleys, separating Coulomb interactions into like-spin () and opposite-spin (). Using degenerate perturbation theory, we compute Landau-level mixing corrections to and for different filling fractions. In the lowest Landau level, screening exhibits an even-odd effect: is reduced more strongly than in an even- angular momentum Haldane pseudopotential and less strongly in odd- angular momentum ones. In the first Landau level, the short-range part () of is reduced comparably to , while the strongest spin anisotropy appears in the pseudopotential. These novel short-range spin correlations have important implications for candidate correlated phases of fractional quantum spin Hall insulators. A distinctive feature of this time-reversal symmetric Hamiltonian, absent in conventional quantum Hall systems, is that spin-flip excitations form localized quasiparticles. We compute their excitation spectrum and predict a nonmonotonic dependence of the ordering temperature of Chern ferromagnetism in on the Landau-level mixing parameter.