Coulomb interaction in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides

Recently, the celebrated Rytova-Keldysh potential has been widely used to describe the Coulomb interaction of few-body complexes in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides. Using this potential to model charged excitons (trions), one finds a strong dependence of the binding energy on whether the monolayer is suspended in air, supported on SiO2, or encapsulated in hexagonal boron-nitride. However, empirical values of the trion binding energies show weak dependence on the monolayer configuration. This deficiency indicates that the description of the Coulomb potential is still lacking in this important class of materials. We address this problem and derive a new potential form, which takes into account the three atomic sheets that compose a monolayer of transition-metal dichalcogenides. The new potential self-consistently supports (i) the nonhydrogenic Rydberg series of neutral excitons and (ii) the weak dependence of the trion binding energy on the environment. Furthermore, we identify an important trion-lattice coupling due to the phonon cloud in the vicinity of charged complexes. Neutral excitons in their ground state, on the other hand, have weaker coupling to the lattice due to the confluence of their charge neutrality and small Bohr radius.