"Ideal" Topological Heavy Fermion Model in Two-dimensional Moiré Heterostructures with Type-II Band Alignment

Yunzhe Liu, Anoj Aryal, Dumitru Calugaru, Zhenyao Fang, Kaijie Yang, Haoyu Hu, Qimin Yan, B. Andrei Bernevig, Chao-xing Liu

Published 2025-07-08Version 1

Topological flat bands play an essential role in inducing exotic interacting physics, ranging from fractional Chern insulators to superconductivity, in moir\'e materials. When topological flat bands possess concentrated quantum geometry, a topological heavy fermion (THF) model was proposed as the starting point to describe the interacting moir\'e physics. In this work, we propose a design principle for realizing "ideal" THF model, which can host an exact flat band with "ideal quantum geometry", namely the trace of Fubini-Study metric equals to the Berry curvature, in a class of two-dimensional moir\'e heterostructures with type-II band alignment. We first introduce a moir\'e Chern-band model to describe this system and show that topological flat bands can be realized in this model when the moir\'e superlattice potential is stronger than the type-II atomic band gap of the heterostructure. Next, we map this model into a THF model that consists of a localized orbital for "f-electron" and a conducting band for "c-electron". We find that both the flatness and quantum geometry of the mini-bands in this THF model depend on the energy gap between c-electron and f-electron bands at $\Gamma$ which is experimentally controllable via external gate voltages. This tunability will allow us to realize an "ideal" topological flat band with zero band-width and "ideal quantum geometry" in this THF model. Our design strategy of topological flat bands is insensitive of twist angle. We also discuss possible material candidates for moir\'e heterostructures with type-II band alignment.