Electronic phonon induced magnetism in moir\'e Mott-Wigner crystals
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
2026-01-21 v1 Strongly Correlated Electrons
Abstract
We show that magnetism in moir\'e Mott-Wigner crystals can be induced by the collective vibration of electrons around their equilibrium positions (i.e., electronic phonons), even without spin interactions between electrons. Due to a geometric valley-orbit coupling from the Berry phase effect, the zero-point energy of electronic phonons reaches minimum when electrons are fully valley polarized. This leads to a spontaneous magnetization when below a critical temperature. We also propose to engineer the magnetism through the photoexcitation of chiral electronic phonons.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.13172,
title = {Electronic phonon induced magnetism in moir\'e Mott-Wigner crystals},
author = {Weide Liang and Xiaoying Du and Na Zhang and Hongyi Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.13172},
year = {2026}
}