Moire materials have emerged as a highly tunable platform for studying the interplay between topological and strongly correlated physics. Recent experiments have revealed, unexpectedly, the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect - a quantized Hall conductivity in the absence of an external magnetic field - in a 2D moire bilayer of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) MoTe2 on WSe2. I will show that the QAH effect in this system arises due to a new mechanism called charge transfer gap inversion. This mechanism extends the band inversion paradigm, widely successful for predicting topology in non-interacting band structure, to the strongly interacting setting. A universal low energy theory is derived which predicts the QAH effect in other similar systems. Finally, I provide an outlook on the exciting future of TMD-based moire materials.
