Excited Rydberg States in MoSe2/WSe2 Heterostructures

The functional form of Coulomb interactions in the transition metal dichalcogenides (TDMs) and other van der Waals solids is critical to many of their unique properties, e.g. strongly-correlated electron states, superconductivity and emergent ferromagnetism. This paper presents measurements of key excitonic energy levels in MoSe2/WSe2 heterostructures. These measurements are obtained from resonance Raman experiments on specific Raman peaks only observed at excited states of the excitons. This data is used to validate a model of the Coulomb potential in these structures which predicts the exciton energies to within ∼5 meV. This model is used to determine the effect of heterostructure formation on the single-particle band gaps of the layers and will have a wide applicability in designing the next generation of more complex TDM structures.