Excitons in mesoscopically reconstructed moir\'e heterostructures

Abstract

Moir\'e effects in twisted or lattice-incommensurate vertical assemblies of two-dimensional crystals give rise to a new class of quantum materials with rich transport and optical phenomena, including correlated electron physics in flat bands of bilayer graphene and moir\'e excitons in semiconductor heterostructures. These phenomena arise from modulations of interlayer hybridization on the nanoscale of spatially varying atomic registries of moir\'e supercells. Due to finite elasticity, however, lattices of marginally-twisted homobilayers and heterostructures can transform from moir\'e to periodically reconstructed patterns with triangular or hexagonal tiling. Here, we expand the notion of nanoscale lattice reconstruction to the mesoscopic scale of extended samples and demonstrate rich consequences in optical studies of excitons in MoSe$_2$-WSe$_2$ heterostructures with parallel and antiparallel alignment. Our results provide a unified perspective on diverse and partly controversial signatures of moir\'e excitons in semiconductor heterostructures by identifying domains with exciton properties of distinct effective dimensionality and establish mesoscopic reconstruction as a compelling feature of real samples and devices with inherent finite-size effects and disorder. Generalized to stacks of other two-dimensional materials, this notion of mesoscale domain formation with emergent topological defects and percolation networks will instructively expand our understanding of fundamental electronic, optical, and magnetic properties of van der Waals heterostructures.