Tunable Phases of Moiré Excitons in van der Waals Heterostructures

Journal article, 2020

Stacking monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides into a heterostructure with a finite twist-angle gives rise to artificial moiré superlattices with a tunable periodicity. As a consequence, excitons experience a periodic potential, which can be exploited to tailor optoelectronic properties of these materials. Whereas recent experimental studies have confirmed twist-angle-dependent optical spectra, the microscopic origin of moiré exciton resonances has not been fully clarified yet. Here, we combine first-principles calculations with the excitonic density matrix formalism to study transitions between different moiré exciton phases and their impact on optical properties of the twisted MoSe2/WSe2 heterostructure. At angles smaller than 2°, we find flat, moiré-trapped states for inter- and intralayer excitons. This moiré exciton phase changes into completely delocalized states at 3°. We predict a linear and quadratic twist-angle dependence of excitonic resonances for the moiré-trapped and delocalized exciton phases, respectively.