Valley depolarization in monolayer WSe2

Abstract

We have systematically examined the circular polarization of monolayer WSe2 at different temperature, excitation energy and exciton density. The valley depolarization in WSe2 is experimentally confirmed to be governed by the intervalley electron-hole exchange interaction. More importantly, a non-monotonic dependence of valley circular polarization on the excitation power density has been observed, providing the experimental evidence for the non-monotonic dependence of exciton intervalley scattering rate on the excited exciton density. The physical origination of our experimental observations has been proposed to be in analogy to the D′yakonov-Perel′ mechanism that is operative in conventional GaAs quantum well systems. Our experimental results are fundamentally important for well understanding the valley pseudospin relaxation in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides.