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arXiv · 2307.16647

Formation, stability, and highly nonlinear optical response of excitons to intense light fields interacting with two-dimensional materials

Eduardo B. Molinero·Bruno Amorim·Mikhail Malakhov·Giovanni Cistaro·Álvaro Jiménez-Galán·Misha Ivanov·Antonio Picón·Pablo San-José·Rui E. F. Silva
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Abstract

Excitons play a key role in the linear optical response of 2D materials. However, their significance in the highly nonlinear optical response to intense mid-infrared light has often been overlooked. Using hBN as a prototypical example, we theoretically demonstrate that excitons play a major role in this process. Specifically, we illustrate their formation and stability in intense low-frequency fields, where field strengths surpass the Coulomb field binding the electron-hole pair in the exciton. Additionally, we establish a parallelism between these results and the already-known physics of Rydberg states using an atomic model. Finally, we propose an experimental setup to test the effect of excitons in the nonlinear optical response

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Eduardo B. Molinero, Bruno Amorim, Mikhail Malakhov, Giovanni Cistaro, Álvaro Jiménez-Galán, Misha Ivanov, Antonio Picón, Pablo San-José, Rui E. F. Silva. 2023-07-31. Formation, stability, and highly nonlinear optical response of excitons to intense light fields interacting with two-dimensional materials. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn6985

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