Valley-polarized hyperbolic exciton polaritons in few-layer two-dimensional semiconductors at visible frequencies

Abstract

Polaritons are quasiparticles describing the coupling between light and matter. In two-dimensional materials, polaritonic phenomena are abundant and unique, owing to their low dimensionality and the extraordinary properties of the supported quasiparticles. In this work, we predict the existence of hyperbolic exciton polaritons (HEPs) in few-layer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) at visible frequencies. We show that hyperbolicity can be induced in the TMD under certain conditions owing to the resonant behavior of the supported excitons, leading to the existence of HEPs. We derive the HEPs' dispersion relation under these conditions and analyze their confinement and loss properties, incorporating nonlocal corrections stemming from the high momentum of the modes. In addition, we show that owing to the valley properties of TMDs, the HEPs are coupled to the valley degree of freedom, leading to a hyperbolic spin-valley Hall effect. Such highly confined and valley-polarized HEPs provide opportunities to control strong light-matter interaction at the atomic scale.