Radiative lifetime of localized excitons in transition-metal dichalcogenides

Disorder derived from defects or local strain in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) can lead to a dramatic change in the physical behavior of the interband excitations, producing inhomogeneous spectral broadening and localization leading to radiative lifetime increase. In this study, we have modeled the surface disorder of a monolayer TMD sample through a randomized potential in the layer plane. We show that this model, applied to a monolayer of WSe2, allows us to simulate the spectra of localized exciton states as well as their radiative lifetime. In this context, we give an in depth study of the influence of the disorder potential parameters on the optical properties of these defects through energies, density of states, oscillator strengths, photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and radiative lifetime at low temperature (4 K). We demonstrate that localized excitons have a longer emission time than free excitons, in the range of tens of picoseconds or more, the radiative decay time depending strongly on the disorder parameter and dielectric environment. Finally, in order to prove the validity of our model, we compare it to available experimental results of the literature.