Published in

Nature Research, Nature Communications, 1(11), 2020

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14826-8

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Universal slow plasmons and giant field enhancement in atomically thin quasi-two-dimensional metals

Journal article published in 2020 by Felipe H. da Jornada ORCID, Lede Xian ORCID, Angel Rubio ORCID, Steven G. Louie ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

AbstractPlasmons depend strongly on dimensionality: while plasmons in three-dimensional systems start with finite energy at wavevector q = 0, plasmons in traditional two-dimensional (2D) electron gas disperse as $ω _p ∼ \sqrt q$ ω p ~ q . However, besides graphene, plasmons in real, atomically thin quasi-2D materials were heretofore not well understood. Here we show that the plasmons in real quasi-2D metals are qualitatively different, being virtually dispersionless for wavevectors of typical experimental interest. This stems from a broken continuous translational symmetry which leads to interband screening; so, dispersionless plasmons are a universal intrinsic phenomenon in quasi-2D metals. Moreover, our ab initio calculations reveal that plasmons of monolayer metallic transition metal dichalcogenides are tunable, long lived, able to sustain field intensity enhancement exceeding 107, and localizable in real space (within ~20 nm) with little spreading over practical measurement time. This opens the possibility of tracking plasmon wave packets in real time for novel imaging techniques in atomically thin materials.