Continuous Mott Transition in Moiré Semiconductors: Role of Long-Wavelength Inhomogeneities.

Abstract

Recent experiments in moiré transition metal dichalcogenide materials have reported the observation of a continuous bandwidth-tuned transition from a metal to a paramagnetic Mott insulator at a fixed filling of one electron per moiré unit cell. The electrical transport measurements reveal a number of puzzling features that are seemingly at odds with the theoretical expectations of an interaction-induced, but disorder-free, bandwidth-tuned metal-insulator transition. In this Letter, we include the effects of long-wavelength inhomogeneities, building on the results for a continuous metal-insulator transition at fixed filling in the clean limit. We examine the effects of mesoscale inhomogeneities near the critical point on transport using the framework of random resistor networks, highlighting the salient differences from a simple percolation-based picture. We place our results in the context of recent and ongoing experiments.