Characterization of the Edge States in Colloidal Bi2Se3 Platelets.

The remarkable development of colloidal nanocrystals with controlled dimensions and surface chemistry has resulted in vast optoelectronic applications. But can they also form a platform for quantum materials, in which electronic coherence is key? Here, we use colloidal, two-dimensional Bi2Se3 crystals, with precise and uniform thickness and finite lateral dimensions in the 100 nm range, to study the evolution of a topological insulator from three to two dimensions. For a thickness of 4-6 quintuple layers, scanning tunneling spectroscopy shows an 8 nm wide, nonscattering state encircling the platelet. We discuss the nature of this edge state with a low-energy continuum model and ab initio GW-Tight Binding theory. Our results also provide an indication of the maximum density of such states on a device.

Single-particle properties of topological Wannier excitons in bismuth chalcogenide nanosheets.

We analyze the topology, dispersion, and optical selection rules of bulk Wannier excitons in nanosheets of Bi2Se3, a topological insulator in the family of the bismuth chalcogenides. Our main finding is that excitons also inherit the topology of the electronic bands, quantified by the skyrmion winding numbers of the constituent electron and hole pseudospins as a function of the total exciton momentum. The excitonic bands are found to be strongly indirect due to the band inversion of the underlying single-particle model. At zero total momentum, we predict that the s-wave and d-wave states of two exciton families are selectively bright under left- or right-circularly polarized light. We furthermore show that every s-wave exciton state consists of a quartet with a degenerate and quadratically dispersing nonchiral doublet, and a chiral doublet with one linearly dispersing mode as in transition metal dichalcogenides. Finally, we discuss the potential existence of topological edge states of chiral excitons arising from the bulk-boundary correspondence.

Effects of Pump Photon Energy on Generation and Ultrafast Relaxation of Excitons and Charge Carriers in CdSe Nanoplatelets.

We studied the initial nature and relaxation of photoexcited electronic states in CdSe nanoplatelets (NPLs). Ultrafast transient optical absorption (TA) measurements were combined with the theoretical analysis of the formation and decay of excitons, biexcitons, free charge carriers, and trions. In the latter, photons and excitons were treated as bosons and free charge carriers as fermions. The initial quantum yields of heavy-hole (HH) excitons, light-hole (LH) excitons, and charge carriers vary strongly with photon energy, while thermal relaxation occurs always within 1 ps. After that, the population of LH excitons is negligible due to relaxation to HH excitons or decay into free electrons and holes. Up to the highest average number of about four absorbed photons per NPL in our experiments, we found no signatures of the presence of biexcitons or larger complexes. Biexcitons were only observed due to the interaction of a probe-generated exciton with an exciton produced previously by the pump pulse. For higher pump photon energies, the initial presence of more free charge carriers leads to formation of trions by probe photons. On increasing the number of absorbed pump photons in an NPL, the yield of excitons becomes higher as compared to free charge carriers, since electron-hole recombination becomes more likely. In addition to a TA absorption feature at energy below the HH exciton peak, we also observed a TA signal at the high-energy side of this peak, which we attribute to formation of LH-HH biexcitons or trions consisting of a charge and LH exciton.