Ab initio study of electromagnatic modes in two-dimensional semiconductors: Application to doped phosphorene

TL;DR

This paper develops a first-principles quantum-field-theory approach to study electromagnetic modes in doped 2D semiconductors, specifically phosphorene, revealing how doping influences exciton behavior and plasmon-polariton properties.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formula for screened conductivity beyond RPA, enabling detailed analysis of light-electron coupling and electromagnetic modes in 2D semiconductors from first principles.

Findings

Small doping significantly reduces exciton binding energy in phosphorene.

Hybridization of excitons with photons forms exciton-polaritons in confined microcavities.

Tuning electron concentration adjusts plasmon-polariton energy and intensity.

Abstract

Starting from the rigorous quantum-field-theory formalism we derive a formula for the screened conductivity designed to study the coupling of light with elementary electron excitations and the ensuing electromagnatic modes in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors. The latter physical quantity consists of three fully separable parts, namely intraband, interband, and ladder conducivities, and is calculated beyond the random phase approximation as well as from first principles. By using this methodology, we study the optical absorption spectra in 2D black phosphorous, so-called phosphorene, as a function of the concentration of electrons injected into the conduction band. The mechanisms of phosphorene exciton quenching versus doping are studied in detail. It is demonstrated that already small doping levels ($n\sim 10^{12}\,{\rm cm}^{-2}$) lead to a radical drop in the exciton binding energy, i.e., from $600\,{\rm meV}$ to $128\,{\rm meV}$. The screened conductivity is applied to study the collective electromagnetic modes in doped phosphorene. It is shown that the phosphorene transversal exciton hybridizes with free photons to form a exciton-polariton. This phenomenon is experimentally observed only for the case of confined electromagnetic microcavity modes. Finally, we demonstrate that the energy and intensity of anisotropic 2D plasmon-polaritons can be tuned by varying the concentration of injected electrons.