Broadband photonic structures to achieve high coupling efficiencies and Purcell factors with dark and interlayer excitons in 2D materials
Horizontal slot waveguides are planar photonic structures with a guided mode which is strongly polarized in the out-of-plane direction and tightly confined in a sub-wavelength region of lower refractive index. We show through FDTD simulations that this mode can lead to coupling efficiencies $β>80\%$ and Purcell factors $F_P>10$ for some types of dark intralayer excitons in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers -- more aplty named ``gray excitons'', as their out-of-plane dipole does couple to adequately polarized light -- as well as interlayer excitons in TMD heterostructures. These figures indicate a path to the strong coupling regime for gray and interlayer excitons, while bright excitons are poorly coupled to the slot mode and experience Purcell suppression for $λ>\SI{1}{\micro\meter}$. A significant hurdle towards strong coupling, however, is the low oscillator strengths of these two excitonic species. We use the Tavis-Cummings model to show that a horizontal-slot racetrack resonator can overcome this difficulty and reach a cooperativity $C>>1$, albeit sacrificing the broadband characteristic of waveguides.