Nature Nanotechnology, Vol.16, No.2, 148-+, 2021
Optical control of the valley Zeeman effect through many-exciton interactions
Charge carriers in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), such as WSe2, have their spin and valley-pseudospin locked into an optically addressable index that is proposed as a basis for future information processing(1,2). The manipulation of this spin-valley index, which carries a magnetic moment(3), requires tuning its energy. This is typically achieved through an external magnetic field (B), which is practically cumbersome. However, the valley-contrasting optical Stark effect achieves valley control without B, but requires large incident powers(4,5). Thus, other efficient routes to control the spin-valley index are desirable. Here we show that many-body interactions among interlayer excitons (IXs) in a WSe2/MoSe2 heterobilayer (HBL) induce a steady-state valley Zeeman splitting that corresponds to B approximate to 6 T. This anomalous splitting, present at incident powers as low as microwatts, increases with power and is able to enhance, suppress or even flip the sign of a B-induced splitting. Moreover, the g-factor of valley Zeeman splitting can be tuned by similar to 30% with incident power. In addition to valleytronics, our results could prove helpful to achieve optical non-reciprocity using two-dimensional materials. Many-body interactions amongst interlayer excitons in a WSe2/MoSe2 heterobilayer give rise to a strong and tunable effective magnetic field enabling the control of the valley pseudospin.