Optical properties of transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

In recent years, 2D materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDCs) monolayers, have attracted a great deal of attention due to their excellent transport and optical properties. Using a tight-binding description and the Bethe-Salpeter equation, we theoretically investigate optical and excitonic properties of TMDC monolayers in different setups. Such 2D materials exhibit peculiar screening properties and excitons with large binding energies. This can also lead to important spin-based applications as the spin-orbit coupling in the valence band results in a splitting close to the K and K' points and yields spin-relaxation times orders of magnitude larger than in III-V semiconductors.