Jonah Haber

All Publications

• Rearrangement collision theory of phonon-driven exciton dissociation PHYSICAL REVIEW B Coveney, C. J. N., Haber, J. B., Alvertis, A. M., Neaton, J. B., Filip, M. R. 2024; 110 (5)

  View details for DOI 10.1103/PhysRevB.110.054307

  View details for Web of Science ID 001290011800001

• Phonon screening and dissociation of excitons at finite temperatures from first principles. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Alvertis, A. M., Haber, J. B., Li, Z., Coveney, C. J., Louie, S. G., Filip, M. R., Neaton, J. B. 2024; 121 (30): e2403434121

  Abstract

  The properties of excitons, or correlated electron-hole pairs, are of paramount importance to optoelectronic applications of materials. A central component of exciton physics is the electron-hole interaction, which is commonly treated as screened solely by electrons within a material. However, nuclear motion can screen this Coulomb interaction as well, with several recent studies developing model approaches for approximating the phonon screening of excitonic properties. While these model approaches tend to improve agreement with experiment, they rely on several approximations that restrict their applicability to a wide range of materials, and thus far they have neglected the effect of finite temperatures. Here, we develop a fully first-principles, parameter-free approach to compute the temperature-dependent effects of phonon screening within the ab initio [Formula: see text]-Bethe-Salpeter equation framework. We recover previously proposed models of phonon screening as well-defined limits of our general framework, and discuss their validity by comparing them against our first-principles results. We develop an efficient computational workflow and apply it to a diverse set of semiconductors, specifically AlN, CdS, GaN, MgO, and [Formula: see text]. We demonstrate under different physical scenarios how excitons may be screened by multiple polar optical or acoustic phonons, how their binding energies can exhibit strong temperature dependence, and the ultrafast timescales on which they dissociate into free electron-hole pairs.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2403434121

  View details for PubMedID 39024110

• Exciton-Phonon Coupling Induces a New Pathway for Ultrafast Intralayer-to-Interlayer Exciton Transition and Interlayer Charge Transfer in WS2-MoS2 Heterostructure: A First-Principles Study. Nano letters Chan, Y. H., Naik, M. H., Haber, J. B., Neaton, J. B., Louie, S. G., Qiu, D. Y., da Jornada, F. H. 2024

  Abstract

  Despite the weak, van der Waals interlayer coupling, photoinduced charge transfer vertically across atomically thin interfaces can occur within surprisingly fast, sub-50 fs time scales. An early theoretical understanding of charge transfer is based on a noninteracting picture, neglecting excitonic effects that dominate optical properties of such materials. We employ an ab initio many-body perturbation theory approach, which explicitly accounts for the excitons and phonons in the heterostructure. Our large-scale first-principles calculations directly probe the role of exciton-phonon coupling in the charge dynamics of the WS2/MoS2 heterobilayer. We find that the exciton-phonon interaction induced relaxation time of photoexcited excitons at the K valley of MoS2 and WS2 is 67 and 15 fs at 300 K, respectively, which sets a lower bound to the intralayer-to-interlayer exciton transfer time and is consistent with experiment reports. We further show that electron-hole correlations facilitate novel transfer pathways that are otherwise inaccessible to noninteracting electrons and holes.

  View details for DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c01508

  View details for PubMedID 38888269

• Maximally localized exciton Wannier functions for solids PHYSICAL REVIEW B Haber, J. B., Qiu, D. Y., da Jornada, F. H., Neaton, J. B. 2023; 108 (12)

  View details for DOI 10.1103/PhysRevB.108.125118

  View details for Web of Science ID 001179844000002

• Quasiparticle and Optical Properties of Carrier-Doped Monolayer MoTe2 from First Principles. Nano letters Champagne, A., Haber, J. B., Pokawanvit, S., Qiu, D. Y., Biswas, S., Atwater, H. A., da Jornada, F. H., Neaton, J. B. 2023

  Abstract

  The intrinsic weak and highly nonlocal dielectric screening of two-dimensional materials is well-known to lead to high sensitivity of their optoelectronic properties to environment. Less studied theoretically is the role of free carriers in those properties. Here, we use ab initio GW and Bethe-Salpeter equation calculations, with a rigorous treatment of dynamical screening and local-field effects, to study the doping dependence of the quasiparticle and optical properties of a monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenide, 2H MoTe2. We predict a quasiparticle band gap renormalization of several hundreds of meV for experimentally attainable carrier densities and a similarly sizable decrease in the exciton binding energy. This results in an almost constant excitation energy for the lowest-energy exciton resonance with an increasing doping density. Using a newly developed and generally applicable plasmon-pole model and a self-consistent solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equation, we reveal the importance of accurately capturing both dynamical and local-field effects to understand detailed photoluminescence measurements.

  View details for DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00386

  View details for PubMedID 37159934

• Exciton Lifetime and Optical Line Width Profile via Exciton-Phonon Interactions: Theory and First-Principles Calculations for Monolayer MoS2. Nano letters Chan, Y., Haber, J. B., Naik, M. H., Neaton, J. B., Qiu, D. Y., da Jornada, F. H., Louie, S. G. 2023

  Abstract

  Exciton dynamics dictates the evolution of photoexcited carriers in photovoltaic and optoelectronic devices. However, interpreting their experimental signatures is a challenging theoretical problem due to the presence of both electron-phonon and many-electron interactions. We develop and apply here a first-principles approach to exciton dynamics resulting from exciton-phonon coupling in monolayer MoS2 and reveal the highly selective nature of exciton-phonon coupling due to the internal spin structure of excitons, which leads to a surprisingly long lifetime of the lowest-energy bright A exciton. Moreover, we show that optical absorption processes rigorously require a second-order perturbation theory approach, with photon and phonon treated on an equal footing, as proposed by Toyozawa and Hopfield. Such a treatment, thus far neglected in first-principles studies, gives rise to off-diagonal exciton-phonon self-energy, which is critical for the description of dephasing mechanisms and yields exciton line widths in excellent agreement with experiment.

  View details for DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00732

  View details for PubMedID 37071728

• Rydberg Excitons and Trions in Monolayer MoTe2. ACS nano Biswas, S., Champagne, A., Haber, J. B., Pokawanvit, S., Wong, J., Akbari, H., Krylyuk, S., Watanabe, K., Taniguchi, T., Davydov, A. V., Al Balushi, Z. Y., Qiu, D. Y., da Jornada, F. H., Neaton, J. B., Atwater, H. A. 2023

  Abstract

  Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) semiconductors exhibit strong excitonic optical resonances, which serve as a microscopic, noninvasive probe into their fundamental properties. Like the hydrogen atom, such excitons can exhibit an entire Rydberg series of resonances. Excitons have been extensively studied in most TMDCs (MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, and WSe2), but detailed exploration of excitonic phenomena has been lacking in the important TMDC material molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe2). Here, we report an experimental investigation of excitonic luminescence properties of monolayer MoTe2 to understand the excitonic Rydberg series, up to 3s. We report a significant modification of emission energies with temperature (4 to 300 K), thereby quantifying the exciton-phonon coupling. Furthermore, we observe a strongly gate-tunable exciton-trion interplay for all the Rydberg states governed mainly by free-carrier screening, Pauli blocking, and band gap renormalization in agreement with the results of first-principles GW plus Bethe-Salpeter equation approach calculations. Our results help bring monolayer MoTe2 closer to its potential applications in near-infrared optoelectronics and photonic devices.

  View details for DOI 10.1021/acsnano.3c00145

  View details for PubMedID 37043483

• Bidirectional phonon emission in two-dimensional heterostructures triggered by ultrafast charge transfer. Nature nanotechnology Sood, A., Haber, J. B., Carlström, J., Peterson, E. A., Barre, E., Georgaras, J. D., Reid, A. H., Shen, X., Zajac, M. E., Regan, E. C., Yang, J., Taniguchi, T., Watanabe, K., Wang, F., Wang, X., Neaton, J. B., Heinz, T. F., Lindenberg, A. M., da Jornada, F. H., Raja, A. 2022

  Abstract

  Photoinduced charge transfer in van der Waals heterostructures occurs on the 100 fs timescale despite weak interlayer coupling and momentum mismatch. However, little is understood about the microscopic mechanism behind this ultrafast process and the role of the lattice in mediating it. Here, using femtosecond electron diffraction, we directly visualize lattice dynamics in photoexcited heterostructures of WSe2/WS2 monolayers. Following the selective excitation of WSe2, we measure the concurrent heating of both WSe2 and WS2 on a picosecond timescale-an observation that is not explained by phonon transport across the interface. Using first-principles calculations, we identify a fast channel involving an electronic state hybridized across the heterostructure, enabling phonon-assisted interlayer transfer of photoexcited electrons. Phonons are emitted in both layers on the femtosecond timescale via this channel, consistent with the simultaneous lattice heating observed experimentally. Taken together, our work indicates strong electron-phonon coupling via layer-hybridized electronic states-a novel route to control energy transport across atomic junctions.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41565-022-01253-7

  View details for PubMedID 36543882