Optical manipulation of valley pseudospin

By Z. Ye, Dezheng Sun, T. Heinz. Nature Physics, 2016

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Valleys in momentum space provide a degree of freedom that could be exploited for applications. A demonstration of valley pseudospin control now completes the generation–manipulation–detection paradigm, paving the way for valleytronic devices. The coherent manipulation of spin and pseudospin underlies existing and emerging quantum technologies, including quantum communication and quantum computation1,2. Valley polarization, associated with the occupancy of degenerate, but quantum mechanically distinct valleys in momentum space, closely resembles spin polarization and has been proposed as a pseudospin carrier for the future quantum electronics3,4. Valley exciton polarization has been created in the transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers using excitation by circularly polarized light and has been detected both optically5,6,7 and electrically8. In addition, the existence of coherence in the valley pseudospin has been identified experimentally9. The manipulation of such valley coherence has, however, remained out of reach. Here we demonstrate all-optical control of the valley coherence by means of the pseudomagnetic field associated with the optical Stark effect. Using below-bandgap circularly polarized light, we rotate the valley exciton pseudospin in monolayer WSe2 on the femtosecond timescale. Both the direction and speed of the rotation can be manipulated optically by tuning the dynamic phase of excitons in opposite valleys. This study unveils the possibility of generation, manipulation, and detection of the valley pseudospin by coupling to photons.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c1837ed8e8363c68a9357dc06df7495286256bf