Screening and plasmons in pure and disordered single- and bilayer black phosphorus

TL;DR

This paper investigates the collective plasmon excitations and screening effects in pure and disordered single- and bilayer black phosphorus, considering band structure, disorder, and electric field tuning, revealing topological phase-related plasmon features.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of plasmons in black phosphorus beyond low-energy models, including disorder effects and electric field tuning, with implications for topological phases.

Findings

Disorder causes damping of plasmon modes.

Electric field can tune plasmon dispersion in bilayer BP.

Topological phase exhibits a gapped plasmon spectrum.

Abstract

We study collective plasmon excitations and screening of disordered single- and bilayer black phosphorus beyond the low energy continuum approximation. The dynamical polarizability of phosphorene is computed using a tight-binding model that properly accounts for the band structure in a wide energy range. Electron-electron interaction is considered within the Random Phase Approximation. Damping of the plasmon modes due to different kinds of disorder, such as resonant scatterers and long-range disorder potentials, is analyzed. We further show that an electric field applied perpendicular to bilayer phosphorene can be used to tune the dispersion of the plasmon modes. For sufficiently large electric field, the bilayer BP enters in a topological phase with a characteristic plasmon spectrum, which is gaped in the armchair direction.