Abstract
Monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are characterized by an extraordinarily strong Coulomb interaction giving rise to tightly bound excitons with binding energies of hundreds of meV. Excitons dominate the optical response as well as the ultrafast dynamics in TMDs. As a result, a microscopic understanding of exciton dynamics is the key for a technological application of these materials. In spite of this immense importance, elementary processes guiding the formation and relaxation of excitons after optical excitation of an electron-hole plasma has remained unexplored to a large extent. Here, we provide a fully quantum mechanical description of momentum- and energy-resolved exciton dynamics in monolayer molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2) including optical excitation, formation of excitons, radiative recombination as well as phonon-induced cascade-like relaxation down to the excitonic ground state. Based on the gained insights, we reveal experimentally measurable features in pump-probe spectra providing evidence for the exciton relaxation cascade.
Highlights
Thin semiconductors, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), have revolutionized research in optics and electronics[1,2,3,4,5]
We focus on the occupation dynamics of the so called A-series, i.e. excitons composed of electrons and holes located at the lowest conduction and highest valence band at the K-point, respectively
We have presented a microscopic view on phonon-driven ultrafast relaxation of excited electron-hole pairs into bound excitons
Summary
To illustrate the formation process of bound excitons after off-resonant excitation, we transfer the single-particle band structure into a two-particle dispersion, which is strongly modified by the Coulomb-attraction between electrons and holes. Due to this process, the excited quasi-free electron-hole plasma cools down and forms a population of bound 1 s excitons. To calculate solve the Wannier equation[18,36,37,38,39] the energies
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