Nonclassical Exciton Diffusion in Monolayer WSe2

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Koloman Wagner - , University of Regensburg (Author)
  • Jonas Zipfel - , University of Regensburg, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Author)
  • Roberto Rosati - , University of Marburg (Author)
  • Edith Wietek - , University of Regensburg (Author)
  • Jonas D. Ziegler - , University of Regensburg (Author)
  • Samuel Brem - , University of Marburg (Author)
  • Raül Perea-Causín - , Chalmers University of Technology (Author)
  • Takashi Taniguchi - , National Institute for Materials Science Tsukuba (Author)
  • Kenji Watanabe - , National Institute for Materials Science Tsukuba (Author)
  • Mikhail M. Glazov - , RAS - Ioffe Physico Technical Institute (Author)
  • Ermin Malic - , University of Marburg, Chalmers University of Technology (Author)
  • Alexey Chernikov - , Chair of Ultrafast Microscopy and Photonics (ct.qmat), Clusters of Excellence ct.qmat: Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter, University of Regensburg (Author)

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate time-resolved exciton propagation in a monolayer semiconductor at cryogenic temperatures. Monitoring phonon-assisted recombination of dark states, we find a highly unusual case of exciton diffusion. While at 5 K the diffusivity is intrinsically limited by acoustic phonon scattering, we observe a pronounced decrease of the diffusion coefficient with increasing temperature, far below the activation threshold of higher-energy phonon modes. This behavior corresponds neither to well-known regimes of semiclassical free-particle transport nor to the thermally activated hopping in systems with strong localization. Its origin is discussed in the framework of both microscopic numerical and semiphenomenological analytical models illustrating the observed characteristics of nonclassical propagation. Challenging the established description of mobile excitons in monolayer semiconductors, these results open up avenues to study quantum transport phenomena for excitonic quasiparticles in atomically thin van der Waals materials and their heterostructures.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number076801
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume127
Issue number7
Publication statusPublished - 13 Aug 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 34459627
ORCID /0000-0002-9213-2777/work/196666182

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas