Optical absorption in two-dimensional materials with tilted Dirac cones

TL;DR

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of how tilted and anisotropic Dirac cones in 2D materials influence optical absorption, revealing tunable, polarization-dependent responses especially in type-II Dirac semimetals, with implications for optoelectronic device engineering.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive theory linking tilt and anisotropy of Dirac cones to optical absorption, enabling characterization solely from absorption spectra and proposing applications in tunable polarizers.

Findings

Type-II Dirac cones show polarization and frequency-dependent absorption.

Fermi level tuning affects absorption due to Pauli blocking in type-II cones.

Optical spectra can fully characterize tilt and anisotropy parameters.

Abstract

The interband optical absorption of linearly polarised light by two-dimensional (2D) semimetals hosting tilted and anisotropic Dirac cones in the bandstructure is analysed theoretically. Super-critically tilted (type-II) Dirac cones are characterised by an absorption that is highly dependent on the incident photon polarisation and frequency, and is tunable by changing the Fermi level with a back-gate voltage. Type-II Dirac cones exhibit open Fermi surfaces and large regions of the Brillouin zone where the valence and conduction bands sit either above or below the Fermi level. As a consequence, unlike their sub-critically tilted (type-I) counterparts, type-II Dirac cones have many states that are Pauli blocked even when the Fermi level is tuned to the level crossing point. We analyse the interplay of the tilt parameter with the Fermi velocity anisotropy, demonstrating that the optical response of a Dirac cone cannot be described by its tilt alone. As a special case of our general theory we discuss the proposed 2D type-I semimetal 8-$Pmmn$ Borophene. Guided by our in-depth analytics we develop an optical recipe to fully characterise the tilt and Fermi velocity anisotropy of any 2D tilted Dirac cone solely from its absorption spectrum. We expect our work to encourage Dirac cone engineering as a major route to create gate-tunable thin-film polarisers.