Broadband photonic structures to achieve high coupling efficiencies and Purcell factors with dark and interlayer excitons in 2D materials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that planar horizontal slot waveguides can achieve high coupling efficiencies and Purcell factors with dark and interlayer excitons in 2D materials, paving the way for strong light-matter interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a photonic structure design that enhances coupling to dark and interlayer excitons in 2D materials, overcoming previous limitations.

Findings

Coupling efficiencies >80% for certain excitons

Purcell factors >10 achieved in simulations

Horizontal-slot racetrack resonator can reach high cooperativity

Abstract

Horizontal slot waveguides are planar photonic structures with a guided mode which is strongly polarized in the out-of-plane direction and tightly confined in a sub-wavelength region of lower refractive index. We show through FDTD simulations that this mode can lead to coupling efficiencies $\beta>80\%$ and Purcell factors $F_P>10$ for some types of dark intralayer excitons in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers -- more aplty named ``gray excitons'', as their out-of-plane dipole does couple to adequately polarized light -- as well as interlayer excitons in TMD heterostructures. These figures indicate a path to the strong coupling regime for gray and interlayer excitons, while bright excitons are poorly coupled to the slot mode and experience Purcell suppression for $\lambda>\SI{1}{\micro\meter}$. A significant hurdle towards strong coupling, however, is the low oscillator strengths of these two excitonic species. We use the Tavis-Cummings model to show that a horizontal-slot racetrack resonator can overcome this difficulty and reach a cooperativity $C>>1$, albeit sacrificing the broadband characteristic of waveguides.