Valley depolarization in monolayer WSe2

TL;DR

This study investigates valley depolarization in monolayer WSe2, revealing how it depends on temperature, excitation energy, and exciton density, with findings relevant for valley pseudospin relaxation understanding.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of non-monotonic valley polarization dependence on excitation power and proposes a D'yakonov-Perel'-like mechanism for valley depolarization.

Findings

Valley depolarization governed by intervalley electron-hole exchange

Non-monotonic valley polarization with excitation power density

Proposed D'yakonov-Perel'-like mechanism for valley relaxation

Abstract

We have systematically examined the circular polarization of monolayer WSe2 at different temperature, excitation energy and exciton density. The valley depolarization in WSe2 is experimentally confirmed to be governed by the intervalley electron-hole exchange interaction. More importantly, a non-monotonic dependence of valley circular polarization on the excitation power density has been observed, providing the experimental evidence for the non-monotonic dependence of exciton intervalley scattering rate on the excited exciton density. The physical origination of our experimental observations has been proposed, which is in analogy to the D'yakonov-Perel' mechanism that is operative in conventional GaAs quantum well systems. Our experimental results are fundamentally important for well understanding the valley psudospin relaxation in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides.