skip to main content


Search for: All records

Creators/Authors contains: "Watanabe, Kenji"

Note: When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
What is a DOI Number?

Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from this site.

  1. Abstract

    The interactions between charges and excitons involve complex many-body interactions at high densities. The exciton-polaron model has been adopted to understand the Fermi sea screening of charged excitons in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides. The results provide good agreement with absorption measurements, which are dominated by dilute bright exciton responses. Here we investigate the Fermi sea dressing of spin-forbidden dark excitons in monolayer WSe2. With a Zeeman field, the valley-polarized dark excitons show distinct p-doping dependence in photoluminescence when the carriers reach a critical density. This density can be interpreted as the onset of strongly modified Fermi sea interactions and shifts with increasing exciton density. Through valley-selective excitation and dynamics measurements, we also infer an intervalley coupling between the dark trions and exciton-polarons mediated by the many-body interactions. Our results reveal the evolution of Fermi sea screening with increasing exciton density and the impacts of polaron-polaron interactions, which lay the foundation for understanding electronic correlations and many-body interactions in 2D systems.

     
    more » « less
  2. Spatial confinement has been frequently engineered to control the flow and relaxation dynamics of exciton polaritons. While widely investigated in GaAs microcavities, exciton-polariton coupling between discretized polariton modes arising from spatially confined 2D crystals been has been less exhaustively studied. Here, we use coherent 2D photoluminescence-detected micro-spectroscopy to detect oscillating 2D peaks exclusively from a spatial trap in a microcavity with an embedded van-der-Waals heterostructure at room temperature. We observe a wide variation of oscillatory phases as a function of spectral position within the 2D spectrum, which suggests the existence of a coupling between the discretized polariton modes. The latter is accompanied by the generation of coherent phonons.

     
    more » « less
  3. Free, publicly-accessible full text available July 19, 2024
  4. Free, publicly-accessible full text available June 1, 2024
  5. Ambipolar dual-gate transistors based on low-dimensional materials, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, black phosphorus, and certain transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), enable reconfigurable logic circuits with a suppressed off-state current. These circuits achieve the same logical output as complementary metal–oxide semiconductor (CMOS) with fewer transistors and offer greater flexibility in design. The primary challenge lies in the cascadability and power consumption of these logic gates with static CMOS-like connections. In this article, high-performance ambipolar dual-gate transistors based on tungsten diselenide (WSe2) are fabricated. A high on–off ratio of 108 and 106, a low off-state current of 100 to 300 fA, a negligible hysteresis, and an ideal subthreshold swing of 62 and 63 mV/dec are measured in the p- and n-type transport, respectively. We demonstrate cascadable and cascaded logic gates using ambipolar TMD transistors with minimal static power consumption, including inverters, XOR, NAND, NOR, and buffers made by cascaded inverters. A thorough study of both the control gate and the polarity gate behavior is conducted. The noise margin of the logic gates is measured and analyzed. The large noise margin enables the implementation of VT-drop circuits, a type of logic with reduced transistor number and simplified circuit design. Finally, the speed performance of the VT-drop and other circuits built by dual-gate devices is qualitatively analyzed. This work makes advancements in the field of ambipolar dual-gate TMD transistors, showing their potential for low-power, high-speed, and more flexible logic circuits. 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available June 28, 2024
  6. Abstract Solid–liquid phase transitions are basic physical processes, but atomically resolved microscopy has yet to capture their full dynamics. A new technique is developed for controlling the melting and freezing of self‐assembled molecular structures on a graphene field‐effect transistor (FET) that allows phase‐transition behavior to be imaged using atomically resolved scanning tunneling microscopy. This is achieved by applying electric fields to 2,3,5,6‐tetrafluoro‐7,7,8,8‐tetracyanoquinodimethane‐decorated FETs to induce reversible transitions between molecular solid and liquid phases at the FET surface. Nonequilibrium melting dynamics are visualized by rapidly heating the graphene substrate with an electrical current and imaging the resulting evolution toward new 2D equilibrium states. An analytical model is developed that explains observed mixed‐state phases based on spectroscopic measurement of solid and liquid molecular energy levels. The observed nonequilibrium melting dynamics are consistent with Monte Carlo simulations. 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available August 3, 2024
  7. At partial fillings of its flat electronic bands, magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) hosts a rich variety of competing correlated phases that show sample-to-sample variations. Divergent phase diagrams in MATBG are often attributed to the sublattice polarization energy scale, tuned by the degree of alignment of the hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) substrates typically used in van der Waals devices. Unaligned MATBG exhibits unconventional superconductor and correlated insulator phases, while nearly perfectly aligned MATBG/hBN exhibits zero-field Chern insulating phases and lacks superconductivity. Here we use scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS) to observe gapped phases at partial fillings of the flat bands of MATBG in a new intermediate regime of sublattice polarization, observed when MATBG is only partially aligned (θGr-hBN ≈ 1.65°) to the underlying hBN substrate. Under this condition, MATBG hosts not only phenomena that naturally interpolate between the two sublattice potential limits, but also unexpected gapped phases absent in either of these limits. At charge neutrality, we observe an insulating phase with a small energy gap (Δ < 5 meV) likely related to weak sublattice symmetry breaking from the hBN substrate. In addition, we observe new gapped phases near fractional fillings ν = ±1/3 and ν = ±1/6, which have not been previously observed in MATBG. Importantly, energy-resolved STS unambiguously identifies these fractional filling states to be of single-particle origin, possibly a result of the super-superlattice formed by two moiré superlattices. Our observations emphasize the power of STS in distinguishing single-particle gapped phases from many-body gapped phases in situations that could be easily confused in electrical transport measurements, and demonstrate the use of substrate engineering for modifying the electronic structure of a moiré flat-band material. 
    more » « less
    Free, publicly-accessible full text available June 1, 2024
  8. Free, publicly-accessible full text available August 17, 2024
  9. Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 1, 2024
  10. Free, publicly-accessible full text available June 1, 2024