Kinetic magnetism in triangular moiré materials

Magnetic properties of materials ranging from conventional ferromagnetic metals to strongly correlated materials such as cuprates originate from Coulomb exchange interactions. The existence of alternate mechanisms for magnetism that could naturally facilitate electrical control has been discussed theoretically 1 – 7 , but an experimental demonstration 8 in an extended system has been missing. Here we investigate MoSe 2 /WS 2 van der Waals heterostructures in the vicinity of Mott insulator states of electrons forming a frustrated triangular lattice and observe direct evidence of magnetic correlations originating from a kinetic mechanism. By directly measuring electronic magnetization through the strength of the polarization-selective attractive polaron resonance 9 , 10 , we find that when the Mott state is electron-doped, the system exhibits ferromagnetic correlations in agreement with the Nagaoka mechanism. Minimization of kinetic energy leads to ferromagnetic correlations between itinerant electrons in MoSe 2 /WS 2 moiré lattices even in the absence of exchange interactions.