No Arabic abstract
We investigate the steady-state out-of-plane spin diffusion in p-type bilayer WSe2 in the presence of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling and Hartree-Fock effective magnetic field. The out-of-plane components of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling serve as the opposite Zeeman-like fields in the two valleys. Together with the identical Hartree-Fock effective magnetic fields, different total effective magnetic field strengths in the two valleys are obtained. It is further revealed that due to the valley-dependent total effective magnetic field strength, similar (different) spin-diffusion lengths in the two valleys are observed at small (large) spin injection. Nevertheless, it is shown that the intervalley hole-phonon scattering can suppress the difference in the spin-diffusion lengths at large spin injection due to the spin-conserving intervalley charge transfers with the opposite transfer directions between spin-up and -down holes. Moreover, with a fixed large pure spin injection, we predict the build-up of a steady-state valley polarization during the spin diffusion with the maximum along the diffusion direction being capable of exceeding 1 %. It is revealed that the valley polarization arises from the induced quasi hot-hole Fermi distributions with different effective hot-hole temperatures between spin-up and -down holes during the spin diffusion, leading to the different intervalley charge transfer rates in the opposite transfer directions. Additionally, it is also shown that by increasing the injected spin polarization, the hole density or the impurity density, the larger valley polarization can be obtained.
We report the fabrication and characterization of gate-defined hole quantum dots in monolayer and bilayer WSe$_2$. The devices were operated with gates above and below the WSe$_2$ layer to accumulate a hole gas, which for some devices was then selectively depleted to define the dot. Temperature dependence of conductance in the Coulomb blockade regime is consistent with transport through a single level, and excited state transport through the dots was observed at temperatures up to 10 K. For adjacent charge states of a bilayer WSe$_2$ dot, magnetic field dependence of excited state energies was used to estimate $g$-factors between 0.8 and 2.4 for different states. These devices provide a platform to evaluate valley-spin states in monolayer and bilayer WSe$_2$ for application as qubits.
Spin-orbit coupling in graphene can be increased far beyond its intrinsic value by proximity coupling to a transition metal dichalcogenide. In bilayer graphene, this effect was predicted to depend on the occupancy of both graphene layers, rendering it gate-tunable by an out-of-plane electric field. We experimentally confirm this prediction by studying magnetotransport in a dual-gated WSe$_2$/bilayer graphene heterostructure. Weak antilocalization, which is characteristic for phase-coherent transport in diffusive samples with spin-orbit interaction, can be strongly enhanced or suppressed at constant carrier density, depending on the polarity of the electric field. From the spin-orbit scattering times extracted from the fits, we calculate the corresponding Rashba and intrinsic spin-orbit parameters. They show a strong dependence on the transverse electric field, which is well described by a gate-dependent layer polarization of bilayer graphene.
We report scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS) measurements of monolayer and bilayer WSe$_2$. We measure a band gap of 2.21 $pm$ 0.08 eV in monolayer WSe$_2$, which is much larger than the energy of the photoluminescence peak indicating a large excitonic binding energy. We additionally observe significant electronic scattering arising from atomic-scale defects. Using Fourier transform STS (FT-STS), we map the energy versus momentum dispersion relations for monolayer and bilayer WSe$_2$. Further, by tracking allowed and forbidden scattering channels as a function of energy we infer the spin texture of both the conduction and valence bands. We observe a large spin-splitting of the valence band due to strong spin-orbit coupling, and additionally observe spin-valley-layer coupling in the conduction band of bilayer WSe$_2$.
Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides are a promising platform to investigate many-body interactions of excitonic complexes. In monolayer tungsten diselenide, the ground-state exciton is dark (spin-indirect), and the valley degeneracy allows low-energy dark momentum-indirect excitons to form. Interactions between the dark exciton species and the optically accessible bright exciton (X) are likely to play significant roles in determining the optical properties of X at high power, as well as limiting the ultimate exciton densities that can be achieved, yet so far little is known about these interactions. Here, we demonstrate long-lived dense populations of momentum-indirect intervalley ($X_K$) and spin-indirect intravalley (D) dark excitons by time-resolved photoluminescence measurements (Tr-PL). Our results uncover an efficient inter-state conversion between X to D excitons through the spin-flip process and the one between D and $X_K$ excitons mediated by the exchange interaction (D + D to $X_K$ + $X_K$). Moreover, we observe a persistent redshift of the X exciton due to strong excitonic screening by $X_K$ exciton with a response time in the timescale of sub-ns, revealing a non-trivial inter-state exciton-exciton interaction. Our results provide a new insight into the interaction between bright and dark excitons, and point to a possibility to employ dark excitons for investigating exciton condensation and the valleytronics.
Recently, it has been pointed out that the twisting of bilayer WSe$_2$ would generate topologically non-trivial flat bands near the Fermi energy. In this work, we show that twisted bilayer WSe$_2$ (tWSe$_2$) with uniaxial strain exhibits a large nonlinear Hall (NLH) response due to the non-trivial Berry curvatures of the flat bands. Moreover, the NLH effect is greatly enhanced near the topological phase transition point which can be tuned by a vertical displacement field. Importantly, the nonlinear Hall signal changes sign across the topological phase transition point and provides a way to identify the topological phase transition and probe the topological properties of the flat bands. The strong enhancement and high tunability of the NLH effect near the topological phase transition point renders tWSe$_2$ and related moire materials new platforms for rectification and second harmonic generations.