Valley phonons and exciton complexes in a monolayer semiconductor

  • Minhao He
  • , Pasqual Rivera
  • , Dinh Van Tuan
  • , Nathan P. Wilson
  • , Min Yang
  • , Takashi Taniguchi
  • , Kenji Watanabe
  • , Jiaqiang Yan
  • , David G. Mandrus
  • , Hongyi Yu
  • , Hanan Dery
  • , Wang Yao
  • , Xiaodong Xu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

178 Scopus citations

Abstract

The coupling between spin, charge, and lattice degrees of freedom plays an important role in a wide range of fundamental phenomena. Monolayer semiconducting transitional metal dichalcogenides have emerged as an outstanding platform for studying these coupling effects. Here, we report the observation of multiple valley phonons – phonons with momentum vectors pointing to the corners of the hexagonal Brillouin zone – and the resulting exciton complexes in the monolayer semiconductor WSe2. We find that these valley phonons lead to efficient intervalley scattering of quasi particles in both exciton formation and relaxation. This leads to a series of photoluminescence peaks as valley phonon replicas of dark trions. Using identified valley phonons, we also uncover an intervalley exciton near charge neutrality. Our work not only identifies a number of previously unknown 2D excitonic species, but also shows that monolayer WSe2 is a prime candidate for studying interactions between spin, pseudospin, and zone-edge phonons.

Original languageEnglish
Article number618
JournalNature Communications
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2020

Funding

This work was mainly supported by the Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division (DE-SC0018171). Part of understanding of the valley phonon physics is supported by DoE BES DE-SC0014349. Device fabrication and part of magneto optical spectroscopy work are supported by Army Research Office (ARO) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program, Grant no. W911NF-18-1-0431and NSF MRSEC 1719797. W.Y. and H.Y. were supported by Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (17312916), and Seed Funding for Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Scheme of HKU. D.G.M. and J.Y. were supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. K.W. and T.T. were supported by the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by the MEXT, Japan and and the CREST (JPMJCR15F3), JST. X.X. acknowledges the support from the State of Washington funded Clean Energy Institute and from the Boeing Distinguished Professorship in Physics.

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