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Optical Injection and Detection of Long-Lived Interlayer Excitons in van der Waals Heterostructures

Alperen Tüğen1,*, Anna M. Seiler1,*, Arthur Christianen1, Kenji Watanabe2, Takashi Taniguchi3, Martin Kroner1, and Ataç İmamoğlu1

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 246502 – Published 10 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/stgs-2s58

Abstract

Interlayer excitons in semiconducting bilayers separated by insulating hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) layers constitute a promising platform for investigation of strongly correlated bosonic phases. Here, we report an optical method for the generation and characterization of long-lived interlayer excitons. We confirm the presence of tightly bound interlayer excitons by measuring 1s and 2s intralayer excitons in each layer concurrently. Using a pump-probe technique, we find interlayer exciton lifetimes up to 8.8  μs, increasing with the thickness of the h-BN. With optical access to long-lived interlayer excitons, our approach provides a new route to explore degenerate Bose–Fermi mixtures of excitons and itinerant electrons with high spatial and temporal resolution.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 246502– Published 10 December, 2025
  • Received 6 June 2025
  • Accepted 3 November 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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