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Title: Spontaneous Valley Polarization of Interacting Carriers in a Monolayer Semiconductor

Abstract

Here, we report magnetoabsorption spectroscopy of gated WSe 2 monolayers in high magnetic fields up to 60 T. When doped with a 2D Fermi sea of mobile holes, well-resolved sequences of optical transitions are observed in both σ± circular polarizations, which unambiguously and separately indicate the number of filled Landau levels (LLs) in both K and K' valleys. This reveals the interaction-enhanced valley Zeeman energy, which is found to be highly tunable with hole density p . We exploit this tunability to align the LLs in K and K' , and find that the 2D hole gas becomes unstable against small changes in LL filling and can spontaneously valley polarize. These results cannot be understood within a single-particle picture, highlighting the importance of exchange interactions in determining the ground state of 2D carriers in monolayer semiconductors.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  2. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; National Science Foundation (NSF)
OSTI Identifier:
1735918
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-20-25746
Journal ID: ISSN 0031-9007; TRN: US2205271
Grant/Contract Number:  
89233218CNA000001; SC0018171; DMR-1644779
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Physical Review Letters
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 125; Journal Issue: 14; Journal ID: ISSN 0031-9007
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; exchange interaction; valleytronics; transition-metal dichalcogenide; two-dimensional electron system; optical spectroscopy

Citation Formats

Li, Jing, Goryca, Mateusz Marek, Wilson, Nathan  P., Stier, Andreas  V., Xu, Xiaodong, and Crooker, Scott  A. Spontaneous Valley Polarization of Interacting Carriers in a Monolayer Semiconductor. United States: N. p., 2020. Web. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.125.147602.
Li, Jing, Goryca, Mateusz Marek, Wilson, Nathan  P., Stier, Andreas  V., Xu, Xiaodong, & Crooker, Scott  A. Spontaneous Valley Polarization of Interacting Carriers in a Monolayer Semiconductor. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.125.147602
Li, Jing, Goryca, Mateusz Marek, Wilson, Nathan  P., Stier, Andreas  V., Xu, Xiaodong, and Crooker, Scott  A. Fri . "Spontaneous Valley Polarization of Interacting Carriers in a Monolayer Semiconductor". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.125.147602. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1735918.
@article{osti_1735918,
title = {Spontaneous Valley Polarization of Interacting Carriers in a Monolayer Semiconductor},
author = {Li, Jing and Goryca, Mateusz Marek and Wilson, Nathan  P. and Stier, Andreas  V. and Xu, Xiaodong and Crooker, Scott  A.},
abstractNote = {Here, we report magnetoabsorption spectroscopy of gated WSe2 monolayers in high magnetic fields up to 60 T. When doped with a 2D Fermi sea of mobile holes, well-resolved sequences of optical transitions are observed in both σ± circular polarizations, which unambiguously and separately indicate the number of filled Landau levels (LLs) in both K and K' valleys. This reveals the interaction-enhanced valley Zeeman energy, which is found to be highly tunable with hole density p. We exploit this tunability to align the LLs in K and K', and find that the 2D hole gas becomes unstable against small changes in LL filling and can spontaneously valley polarize. These results cannot be understood within a single-particle picture, highlighting the importance of exchange interactions in determining the ground state of 2D carriers in monolayer semiconductors.},
doi = {10.1103/physrevlett.125.147602},
journal = {Physical Review Letters},
number = 14,
volume = 125,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Oct 02 00:00:00 EDT 2020},
month = {Fri Oct 02 00:00:00 EDT 2020}
}

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