Waveguiding valley excitons in monolayer transition metal dicalcogenides by dielectric interfaces in the substrate

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how dielectric patterning of substrates can selectively guide valley excitons in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides, enabling excitonic waveguides without affecting the transverse exciton branch.

Contribution

It introduces a method to engineer exciton waveguides in monolayers via dielectric interfaces, exploiting the differential response of longitudinal and transverse exciton branches.

Findings

Longitudinal excitons can be guided by dielectric interfaces following Snell-Descartes law.

Massive transverse excitons remain unaffected by dielectric patterning.

Dielectric superlattices strongly modify the dispersion of longitudinal excitons.

Abstract

In monolayers of the semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides, the electron-hole exchange interaction splits the exciton dispersion into a massive transverse branch, and a longitudinal branch that has very light or even zero mass depending on the form of screened Coulomb interaction. The group velocity of the longitudinal branch is sensitive to the strength of electron-hole exchange, which can be engineered through the dielectric environment. Here we show that dielectric patterning of the substrate can be exploited to realize waveguide of the exciton in the longitudinal branch in a homogeneous monolayer, leaving the massive transverse branch unaffected. At a lateral interface of different dielectric constant in the substrate, the transmission and reflection of exciton in the longitudinal branch obey the Snell-Descartes law of optical system, and total reflection can be exploited to realize excitonic waveguide using two parallel interfaces. The same dielectric pattern of the substrate appears to be completely transparent for the massive transverse branch exciton, which has no interface scattering. When the monolayer is placed on a one-dimensional dielectric superlattice, the dispersion of the longitudinal branch is strongly renormalized, and the wavefunctions exhibit one-dimensional features, confined to either the low-dielectric or high-dielectric regions. In contrast, the massive transverse branch excitons are not affected by the substrate dielectric pattern, exhibiting pristine properties as in a freestanding monolayer.