Mapping Charge Excitations in Generalized Wigner Crystals

Abstract: Transition metal dichalcogenide-based moire superlattices exhibit very strong electron-electron correlations, thus giving rise to strongly correlated quantum phenomena such as generalized Wigner crystal states. Theoretical studies predict that unusual quasiparticle excitations across the correlated gap between upper and lower Hubbard bands can arise due to long-range Coulomb interactions in generalized Wigner crystal states. Here we describe a new scanning single-electron charging (SSEC) spectroscopy technique with nanometer spatial resolution and single-electron charge resolution that enables us to directly image electron and hole wavefunctions and to determine the thermodynamic gap of generalized Wigner crystal states in twisted WS2 moire heterostructures. High-resolution SSEC spectroscopy was achieved by combining scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) with a monolayer graphene sensing layer, thus enabling the generation of individual electron and hole quasiparticles in generalized Wigner crystals. We show that electron and hole quasiparticles have complementary wavefunction distributions and that thermodynamic gaps of order 50meV exist for the 1/3 and 2/3 generalized Wigner crystal states.