Variational and field-theoretical approach to exciton-exciton interactions and biexcitons in semiconductors

Abstract: Bound electron-hole pairs in semiconductors known as excitons are the subject of intense research due to their potential for optoelectronic devices and applications, especially in the realm of two-dimensional materials. While the properties of free excitons in these systems are well understood, a general description of their interactions is complicated due to their composite nature, which leads to exchange between the identical fermions of different excitons. In this work we employ a variational approach to study interactions between Wannier excitons and obtain an effective interaction potential between two ground-state excitons in a system of spin-degenerate electrons and holes. This potential is in general nonlocal and depends on the coupled spins of the particles. When particularized to hydrogen-like excitons with a heavy hole, it becomes local and exactly reproduces the Heitler-London result for two interacting hydrogen atoms. Thus, our result can be interpreted as a generalization of the Heitler-London potential to arbitrary masses. Including corrections due to excited states results in a van der Waals potential at large distances, which is expected due to the induced dipole-dipole nature of the interactions. Additionally, we use a path-integral formalism to develop a many-body theory for a gas of excitons, resulting in an excitonic action that formally includes many-body interactions between excitons. While in the field representing the excitons is exactly bosonic, we clarify how the internal exchange processes arise in the field-theoretical treatment, and show that the diagrams corresponding to the interactions between excitons align with our variational calculation when evaluated on shell. Our methods and results lay the groundwork for a generalized theory of exciton-exciton interactions and their application to the study of biexciton spectra and correlated excitonic matter.