We explored how the antiferromagnetic spin alignment in adjacent layers of the van der Waals crystal CrSBr confines Coulomb bound electron hole pairs into one dimension. In two back-to-back publications in Nature Materials, we discovered two key signatures of this intriguing process:
In a close collaboration with the groups of Mackillo Kira (University of Michigan), Zdeněk Sofer (University of Chemistry and Technology Prague) and Florian Dirnberger (Technical University of Munich), we resolved the internal structure and a strong fine-structure splitting of the excitons.
We also contributed to a complementary study by the groups of D. N. Basov (Columbia University, New York) and colleagues as well as Alexey Chernikov (TU Dresden) to identify a new exciton species living exquisitely at the surfaces of the quasi-one-dimensional semiconductor: so-called surface excitons.
Link to Paper: Controlling Coulomb correlations and fine structure of quasi-one-dimensional excitons by magnetic order
Link to Paper: Magnetically confined surface and bulk excitons in a layered antiferromagnet
