Optical orientation with linearly polarized light in transition metal dichalcogenides

Abstract

We study the optical properties of semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers under the influence of strong out-of-plane magnetic fields, using the effective massive Dirac model. We pay attention to the role of spin-orbit-coupling effects, doping level, and electron-electron interactions, treated at the Hartree-Fock level. We find that optically induced valley and spin imbalance, commonly attained with circularly polarized light, can also be obtained with linearly polarized light in the doped regime. Additionally, we explore an exchange-driven mechanism to enhance the spin-orbit splitting of the conduction band, in $n$-doped systems, controlling both the carrier density and the intensity of the applied magnetic field.