Longitudinal optical conductivity of graphene in van der Waals heterostructures composed of graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides

Abstract

Placing and twisting graphene on transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) forms a van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure. The occurrence of Zeeman splitting and Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) changes graphene's linear dispersion and conductivity. Hence, this paper studies the dependence of graphene's longitudinal optical conductivity on Rashba SOC, the twist-angle and temperature. At zero temperature, a main conductivity peak exists. When Rashba SOC increases, a second peak occurs, with both extremes presenting an enhanced height and width, and the frequencies where the two peaks arise will increase because the energy gap and the possibility of electron transition increase. Altering the twist-angle from 0 to 30∘, the conductivity is primarily affected by chalcogen atoms. Moreover, when temperature increases to room temperature, besides a Drude peak due to the thermal excitation, a new band arises in the conductivity owing to the joint effect of the thermal transition and the photon transition.