Optical signatures of moiré trapped biexcitons

Abstract

Atomically thin heterostructures formed by twisted transition metal dichalcogenides can be used to create periodic moiré patterns. The emerging moiré potential can trap interlayer excitons into arrays of strongly interacting bosons, which form a unique platform to study strongly correlated many-body states. In order to create and manipulate these exotic phases of matter, a microscopic understanding of exciton–exciton interactions and their manifestation in these systems becomes indispensable. Recent density-dependent photoluminescence (PL) measurements have revealed novel spectral features indicating the formation of trapped multi-exciton states providing important information about the interaction strength. In this work, we develop a microscopic theory to model the PL spectrum of trapped multi-exciton complexes focusing on the emission from moiré trapped single- and biexcitons. Based on an excitonic Hamiltonian we determine the properties of trapped biexcitons as function of twist angle and use these insights to predict the luminescence spectrum of moiré excitons for different densities. We demonstrate how side peaks resulting from transitions to excited states and a life time analysis can be utilized as indicators for moiré trapped biexcitons and provide crucial information about the excitonic interaction strength.