Two-body solution and instabilities along Středa lines in moiré flat bands
Phys. Rev. B 114, 165142 – Published 28 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/r782-7yh6
Abstract
Moiré minibands in twisted homobilayer semiconductors can, under suitable approximations, be modeled as a pair of Landau levels with opposite Chern numbers. This provides a minimal model for searching novel topological states in a time-reversal-symmetric Hamiltonian. In this work, we investigate the effects of an external magnetic field in this model. We study the many-body ground state in the density–magnetic-field () plane along the Středa line with Hartree-Fock approximation. Away from charge neutrality, we find the Chern-insulating (incompressible) state is very robust while toward charge neutrality, we find a transition from incompressible phase to compressible phase as the interaction strength decreases. Using time-dependent mean-field theory, we further analyze spin-flip excitations and find that the incompressible state along the Středa line toward charge neutrality becomes unstable even at large when magnetic field is sufficiently large. Finally, we solve the two-body problem in a given Landau level exactly where the two particles experience unequal magnetic fields using a basis called center-of-charge basis. This basis allows any isotropic interaction to be parametrized by a single quantum number, the relative angular momentum, thereby extending the Haldane pseudopotentials to the unequal-magnetic-fields case. As the difference of the two magnetic fields varies, these pseudopotentials show a sequence of level crossings, leading to nonmonotonic structure of pseudopotentials that is absent in ordinary Landau-level systems. Our formulation provides a useful starting point for studying weak-field physics in moiré flat bands, where magnetic Bloch-state basis becomes computationally impossible due to the large basis sizes.