Plasmonic photonic crystal mirror for long-lived interlayer exciton generation

Abstract: Interlayer excitons in van der Waals heterostructures of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides have recently emerged as a fascinating platform for quantum many-body effects, long-range interactions, and opto-valleytronic applications. The practical implementation of such phenomena and applications requires further development of the long-lived character of interlayer excitons. Whereas material developments have successfully enhanced the nonradiative lifetime, the out-of-plane polarization nature of the interlayer excitons has made it challenging to improve the radiative lifetime with conventional photonic mirrors. Here, we propose and systematically analyze a plasmonic photonic crystal (PPhC) mirror that can increase the radiative lifetime of interlayer excitons by two orders of magnitude. Based on the vacuum field transition, the PPhC mirror supports spatially uniform radiative decay suppression over its territory, which is crucial for engineering the interlayer excitons not localized at a specific position. The PPhC mirror platform will offer new possibilities for realizing long-lived interlayer exciton-based nanodevices.