Optical probing of Wigner crystallization in monolayer WSe$_2$ via diffraction of longitudinal excitons

Abstract: Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are characterized by relatively large carrier effective masses and suppressed screening of the Coulomb interaction, which substantially enhances the correlation effects in these structures. The direct band gap allows to effectively optically probe these correlations. Here, we present an experimental observation of Wigner crystallization in monolayer $\mathrm{WSe}_2$ probed by the measurement of the exciton diffraction on the Wigner crystal (WC) periodic potential. We observe the formation of the WC phase in the absence of external magnetic fields at temperature range $T<26~\mathrm{K}$ and carrier concentrations $n$ $<2\times10^{11}~\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$. The direct observation of the exciton diffraction is enabled by the strong exciton longitudinal-transverse splitting induced by the long-range intervalley exchange interaction, leading to the large detuning between main exciton peak and first diffraction peak. Our findings highlight that the valley degree of freedom of charge carriers in TMDs facilitates optical probing of correlated electron phases in these structures.