Interlayer Fermi Polarons in Bilayer MoTe$_2$

Ruihao Ni; Eugen Dizer; Maximilian Wolf; Son T. Le; Sharadh Jois; Jeffrey J. Schwartz; Liuxin Gu; Rundong Ma; Suji Park; Beini Gao; Lifu Zhang; Houk Jang; Takashi Taniguchi; Kenji Watanabe; Aubrey T. Hanbicki; Adam L. Friedman; Richard Schmidt; You Zhou

arXiv · 2609.38045

Interlayer Fermi Polarons in Bilayer MoTe$_2$

Ruihao Ni·Eugen Dizer·Maximilian Wolf·Son T. Le·Sharadh Jois·Jeffrey J. Schwartz·Liuxin Gu·Rundong Ma·Suji Park·Beini Gao·Lifu Zhang·Houk Jang·Takashi Taniguchi·Kenji Watanabe·Aubrey T. Hanbicki·Adam L. Friedman·Richard Schmidt·You Zhou

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Abstract

Atomic bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) host quantum phases governed by the layer degree of freedom, including bilayer Wigner crystals, fractional Chern insulators, and exciton condensates. These phases are probed primarily through exciton spectroscopy, yet it remains poorly understood how excitons and carriers interact to form Fermi polarons in bilayers, where both the impurity and the Fermi sea carry a layer pseudospin. Progress has been limited because most TMD bilayers have momentum-indirect optical bandgaps, in which non-radiative decay and inhomogeneous broadening obscure the intrinsic spectra. Here, we show that bilayer MoTe$_2$, unlike most TMD bilayers, retains a direct optical bandgap, providing a clean platform for studying bilayer Fermi-polaron physics. In a dual-gated device, an out-of-plane electric field continuously tunes the hybridization between intralayer and interlayer excitons, forming layer-coherent excitons. Upon electrostatic doping, the excitonic spectrum evolves into multiple polaron branches, controlled by both carrier doping and the out-of-plane electric field. Among these, we identify a polaron with no analog in monolayers, in which a layer-coherent exciton is dressed by carriers in the opposite layer, and is quantitatively captured by our field-theoretic model. Our results establish that pseudospin structure in both the impurity and the bath reshapes polaron formation, opening new avenues to many-body states such as Bose-Einstein condensates with interlayer coherence.

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Ruihao Ni, Eugen Dizer, Maximilian Wolf, Son T. Le, Sharadh Jois, Jeffrey J. Schwartz, Liuxin Gu, Rundong Ma, Suji Park, Beini Gao, Lifu Zhang, Houk Jang, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Aubrey T. Hanbicki, Adam L. Friedman, Richard Schmidt, You Zhou. 2026-09-29. Interlayer Fermi Polarons in Bilayer MoTe$_2$. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.38045

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